October 2010

October 30, 2010

It has been about six months since I last cruised with the sunroof open through Palos Verdes in a white shirt and Ray-Bans. Around Portuguese Bend in the black BMW you could have seen me with the bling hanging out the driver's side. The best rap on the planet blasting. That would be Steve Coleman & Metrics. Since '93 rap has has only been a mood-enhancer and there are only certain moods I enjoy having enhanced by beats and rhymes, driving bogard is first. There was a time when I threw out some couplets, but I couldn't live for making blue collar teens wanna be. So my heart wasn't in the core of the art. I might have thought a broader mix of mental juices could be loosed by the right combination, and a few have tried that hiphop chemistry, but most of the young punks can't hack it. They confuse H20 with H2SO4. I third degree that mimicry of shit we heard before.

And so I take my pleasures elsewhere.

I couldn't estimate who it would be that would not look as stupid as Snoop Dogg, who is now officially the oldest man in the club. He blew up a truck for Zynga, and that's the state of the art. But Jay-Z has done the extraordinary. He has become middle aged, appropriately. So I was literally brought to tears when I saw this piece this morning. It is what hiphop should have become, and now, if this is any indicator, has actually become - because this is the man at the top.

There are several things that strike me about this tribute to NYC in this performance.

The first thing you have to recognize is Jay-Z himself. Everything about his performance says pro. He's up to make the perfection exuding confidence, ease and energy at the same time. He's right in the moment and he knows he is the performance. The chorus, busted out by BK just soars. It's flat out majestic. The stanzas chop with the same piano highlights that made 'Hard Knock Life' groundbreaking, but now all empty space is orchestrated right through to the dramatic swelling cinematic drama tumbling down like boom boom boom. It dances with poise and lets the bittersweet poison of the gritty lyric sink in. But like the best hiphop and why the whole genre always has the potential to change music, you don't get it until you read the lyrics, memorize their poetry, internalize their associative imagery and then spin it back with the dBs up into the plus.

What's excellent here is that so long as Jay-Z stays in the game there's a level of mediocrity that he won't stand for, and we all stand to win for that. I thought about Linkin Park last month seeing that they put out a new album that's less hiphop and more something else. After their collab with Jay-Z what else hiphop is there for them to do? My prediction. If Jay-Z is all that he portends to be in this performance, then fifty years from now, this will be the sort of stentorian lyricism that rules 4:4 time, and you'll have to go to Bob Dylan and get sparse and rambling to find its equal. And so there is the reason that he's like Sinatra. May he live that long.

It's official. Sometime today I got my millionth hit. That's a fairly extroardinary landmark of which I'm rather proud. I will only celebrate it by sharing that factoid with you, my readers, who have made it all possible. You are not fans of some obscure little blog. But you know that.

It took about seven years. I've put in almost 8000 posts and we have recieved over a quarter million comments. It's not huge by the standards of the major blogs, but it's better than hanging out in the park. I consider the blog a success.

As you know, my mission has changed over the years. I'd say there's a significant difference between 42 and 49, and in five years I'll be a completely different person. My aim is to become slightly more ascetic and continue to read more and talk more about the books I read. I'm just about done with gaming on XBox, which I've also done for seven years, and I expect that to liberate more of my time. I quit Mafia Wars on Facebook about a month ago, and since January I've lost about 20 pounds. My quick little experiment in the market this summer showed I can make money when I pay attention. And my attention to open source software has begun to pay off. I've also learned that I really love to focus and let my mind crank on things and that I should waste less and less time.

What all that means for the blog is that I'm likely to pursue a few less topical items as I get a bit more focused and serious. I'll probably write longer pieces, but who knows. I'm looking forward to understanding a lot more about what Taleb is about to write which will probably take me into a new place I haven't considered here much at all, and that is the world of psychology. I have been avoiding discussions about psychology and sex because I don't have any theories about them. But I'm beginning to see where the cognitive science in me is looping back to that world considering Taleb and Steven Pinker are saying about how humans represent reality in their heads.

As for sex, I'm really curious as to why people are so utterly meserized by it, or particularly why people think good sex makes life good. Which is to ask if sex is the opiate of the masses and what the effect of doing it has on perception. That's another part of psychology, I suppose. I'm curious as to what happens when knowledge fails. Exactly how animal do we become by degrees?

Thirdly, I'm hoping that my interest in big data takes me towards the analysis of different kinds of knowledge than I've been looking at. In particular I'm very curious to know why medical computing has eluded our better minds.

So it has been a great million. Thanks to all of you who have been around since back in the day. There's much more to come, so stick around. Tell a friend.

October 29, 2010

As you can see, I have a new look at Cobb. It is influenced by the new theme I put on Chrome which is the Tom Sachs Theme. There are people who say that Sachs is best known for his "bronzes of Hello Kitty, a foamcore Unité d'Habitation, and a functioning plywood McDonald's", but that's just stupidity fronting as taste. I say the man is brilliant in the way Dean Kamen is. He builds things.

You cannot appreciate Tom Sachs the way I do unless you can look at the following picture and get really excited about the space. This picture gets to me in the same way as walking down the aisle as Sur La Table surrounded by cooking hardware, or walking down the aisle at Fry's surrounded by computing hardware, or walking down the aisle at Ace surrounded by hardware. These are today's modern stockpiles of tools for creative construction and people who think like I do are excited by the possibilities of building.

I'm a gearhead and Sachs is a gearhead as well. It's quite finally a pleasure to find his kind of art to get me beyond the designs of Oakley, which are beginning to get old. But what really got to me was a surprise that I found having used the Chrome theme for a day. It's the quote: "It won't fail because of me."

﻿﻿﻿That says plenty. So when I checked out his website, I wondered if the person matched up to the artwork. Comparing him to Duchamps or Warhol because he does bricolage with what appear to be found objects is just a lazy way of describing him to a rather stale art crowd in NYC. I mean really, why would anybody want to be the next Warhol? So I got 15 minutes into his Goole presentation and determined that I like him. Not too ironic, or rather I should say all of his irony seems to come from his comfort in being misinterpreted and people not getting his jokes. He opens up with a classic geek line, which you would expect to get interest at Google "Who is going to be the last Cylon?" and nobody had an answer. He had to explain that it was Battlestar Galactica and was disappointed that they didn't get it. I don't watch the show but I get it when he said Adama. At any rate, his arts's raison d'etre is simple. I want to build what I can't afford to buy. So he built a spacecraft. A man after my own heart.

I hope to continue to be impressed with Sachs, and I will take to and adapt his visual themes. They are clean and precise without being antiseptic or brittle. They are masculine and clever bringing a sense of awe not by being overbearing, but by being engineered. It is truly wonderful. Maybe there is art in contemporary America after all.

October 28, 2010

I was searching for pictures of the my father's library reminiscing about the books that made the black intellectual part of me what it was, and shaped it growing up. A thoughtful reader who doesn't post here at Cobb but on Facebook sent me back thinking about Wright, Goins, Baraka and that cast of outcast writers I grew up on and then got fed up with en masse.

This photo of me is four years old. For some reason I am drawn to certain pictures of myself that portend the blackity black ghetto philosopher, or the black redneck. It was about that time I started wearing wife beaters and a crucifix and yet at the same time, as looking back to my writings here would show, I was deeply committed to more Republicanish themes. The contrast and synergy is interesting. It just so happens that I just finished three pieces of Golden Bird chicken and theres a Heineken out of frame in my right hand. This is about the most alert I looked that entire evening. My brothers and I were talking about the issues of the day.

October 27, 2010

I've been reading like a mad man in the gap between projects, and catching up and reorganizing. A thoughtful reader added to my Goodreads list reminded me of Chester Himes. And so I wrote:

Chester Himes, now that was something I could barely stand. I read 'If He Hollers' just through a couple dozen pages and could take no more. He so brilliantly made me angry, and brought to mind so much of what I felt that I couldn't take it. There have been books like that - too painful to read. And Himes was the last of his kind that I read in the days before the LA Riots, before I left Los Angeles at the age of 30. One image stands in my mind of the man described by Himes, of the black man so angry that he drank hard liquor alone in his room and only got up for the fresh breeze of the open window in order to throw empty whiskey bottles at the white men in the street. It was the dead end of despair I know I was not born for, and so I left Himes alone.

There is that canon of black American literature I read once upon a time. At the beginning it was so very frustrating. Intensely painful it was as I tried desperately to connect with any black literary scene. It was part of my fête manqué out of technical school and clueless about the higher elements of the humanities. When I decided to be purposeful in reading contemporary black American literature I first found Gloria Naylor's 'Women of Brewster Place'. I purposefully didn't want to read the older authors that I had known - no more Richard Wright, James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones-Amiri Baraka, Alex Haley, Ralph Ellison. Nobody old. Nobody ghetto. It left almost nobody. It took me almost forever to find an author that actually spoke to me in a way I wanted to share in joy and pride. It took a lot of long hard looks inward and outward. I didn't know what to expect - I didn't know how my literacy would serve me. I didn't know what to make of what I learned. After a few years, I became comfortable with exactly that. It took from 1989 to 1993 to make peace with that itch. I didn't give it up finally until 1996.

In the end, I was most satisfied by Ernest J. Gaines, Jean Toomer, Darryl Pinckney, Paul Beatty & Toni Morrison. I can't describe in any small way what they meant. They were each an Emerald City that pointed my home, each a patch of blackness in serious literature I needed to see and experience, each a solid stepping stone in a garden of forking paths.

Himes sat out there like Iceberg Slim and Donald Goins and John Edgar Wideman. Just all blue collar and urban, so unlike my father, the soft-spoken Connecticut Episcopalian photographer, Sierra Club hiker and part-time poet. It was impossible for me to accept stories of the mean streets as real literature, as impossible as it is for a Hebrew to accept Baptist ministry as Gospel. It all may have had the ring of truth, but not of destiny.

I wonder how much literature has served an existential purpose for me, and yet some part of me resists the question. I know who I am and who I must be, but it is ever the case that I am engaged with writers far more than with neighbors. Sooner or later, I find a part of myself waiting for me in the words of strangers. What will I find in Tolstoy? Another part of me.

I reflect on that aspect of my generation immersed in a struggle for self-reflection in the arts and in the mainstream. It seemed so god-awfully important and significant and momentous. Just standing in line for a Spike Lee movie or a play by August Wilson or a book signing by Toni Morrison was portentous. There was a day in the 80s when George C. Wolfe snarked about the world's last 'mama on the couch play', and I think that time has come and gone, then again I've only seen one Tyler Perry.

There's a smart young man named Adam Serwer who writes here and there. I imagine him to be one of the silent majority of Cobb followers. Since I lapse into the profane and unprofessional language gutters and artistic airspace of the narrow bowling alley of political melioration, I understand why lots of people who read don't also write here. In a world where men with the intelligence and integrity of Juan Williams get crucified in media wars, I'm smart to be a blogger. Then again, for a three year two million dollar contract, I'd put on a monkey suit and be a droll troll.

Serwer, mindfully keeping his distance from marginalized tar babies of the sort I profess to be, nevertheless is broadly well-read enough, and presumably secure enough in his position to recognize that all Republican and conservative interest in America's immigration problem is not mere racist claptrap. And it would be nice to be on his referral list, but since he quotes Tamar Jacoby of my favorite think tank, the Manhattan Institute, I am pleased. Here he shows that he gets it.

Tamar Jacoby, a former Manhattan Institute fellow who is now president of ImmigrationWorksUSA, sums up the choice America faces: "Do we want to be the kind of country that has 11 million people living on the margins of society outside the rule of law and outside our body politic?"

Legal Slavery vs Voluntary SlaveryMy main position on immigration is that it must be legal, after that, I am not concerned about the disposition of Americans so long as the rule of law is maintained and the economy is strong. In other words, I'm not particularly concerned about a second underclass, so long as it is not legally enforced. I see that legal enforcement in the breach in considering the fate of the 'undocumented worker'. It is essentially true that a illegal immigrant has no rights a citizen is bound to respect echoing a similar sentiment of the Jim Crow era. The difference is that race discrimination was legally sanctioned and contracts with blacks were not enforced. Today no such legal barriers are in force. So that is why I strenuously argue against illegal immigration, especially when people exclaim about Mexican 'rights' to be here.

Mexicans who disabuse their Mexican citizenship at the risk of running afowl of American law and society are volunteering to be second-class citizens in a country which may or may not honor their rights. This is a calculated risk that I respect, and so I shed no tears for the victims of abuse. I think of illegal labor as indentured servitude. From a moral perspective I find it appalling to have a nation with two separate societies and rules. I would much prefer a society with a clean floor and citizenship should be the bright line.

I should have written that I shed *few* tears for the victims of abuse. I was saying a lot in that piece and you should read the whole thing to get a grasp on my entire position which hasn't changed much since then. I'm not particularly interested in the horserace aspect of which party gets credit for the solution that lies in our future but I would like to emphasize a few pieces that I agree with and have been hearing around the Right.

1. Mexico is messed up. Mexico is an utterly class-bound, racist society that is corrupted by the drug trade in ways that far outstrip the way the China is wealthy and growing because of its trade surplus. The US outsourced *first* to Mexico in the days before NAFTA. This was before there was a such thing as Samsung. Back when GM cars still were more popular than Toyotas. How India and China and Korea have leapfrogged Mexico over the past 30 years, despite Mexico's geographical and cultural proximity to America is testimony in every way to Mexico's economic failure. Yet Carlos Slim is one of the richest men on the planet, and Chiapas is on fire. Until people start talking about the geopolitical reality of Mexico now instead of some romantic blood & soil reconquista vision, this situation is never going to get better.

2. Mexican citizens are still Mexican citizens. And they send about 20 billion dollars in remittances back to their country of origin every year. They retain their rights as citizens and we need to start thinking about what it means when they refuse to give up those rights in exchange for the privilege of working in America. There is inherently a tremendous injustice in what Mexican citizens get away with as compared to every other national that comes to America for economic advantage. Our immigration policy towards the world should not be balkanized. Imagine what the Left would say if we started exposing defacto exceptions in our immigration policy for Muslims or for homosexuals.

3. Deportation Ain't Border EnforcementNobody is going to deport millions of Mexicans. That doesn't mean borders should not be enforced. The fence should be built on principle. It's a problem border. If the border cannot be defended, then neither can citizenship. Just look to Afghanistan/Pakistan to see the problem. We don't need another no man's land. American militias will always spring up until the border is sealed. Understand that the issues are separate and must remain separate. If progress is not made on border enforcement, then opportunity for the two issues to remain separate will lessen - the militia movement will harden and ordinary Americans will become radicalized. We risk the equivalent of a 'fugitive slave act'.

4. Liberty or DeathBut my most important point is that we cannot have a double standard for citizenship. Things need to be made much more clear and permanent. Without that we make a mockery of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, and our standards of equal protection under the law. There is and only should be one standard for Civil Rights in America and it requires the reciprocity of citizenship. Until that day comes, we will abuse Mexican citizens here illegally because they will continue to be governed without consent. How much clearer can it be made?

October 26, 2010

Being as I am a crotchety old fart, I know what's best for everybody including me. So I keep my ass on the straight and narrow and protect my soul from undue influence. You know. From the Element. But it's easy to find and sometimes it sneaks in and jes grows. Not much you can do but convert like Sir Nose. It's not like I never learned to swim or can't catch the rhythm of the stroke. It's just that once you've swum the English Channel, it's time to move on. And so I did, and every once in a while crack wise on those who are just knee deep, and even those who are totally deep. Swimming ain't all of human locomotion. Sometimes you have to bike. Sometimes you have to climb. Sometimes you have to run.

So I strayed off the path for a bored minute - waiting for a download to complete - and wound up at the NYT, which remains in my bookmarks but is low on the visit priority. I watched a few of the front page videos. One about a happy young couple. One about a dude who draws subway commuters with his fingers on an iPhone. One about Chinese head banging mosh boys. Eclexia about somewhat extraordinary people all over the world. Then I drifted over through other sections. The NYT is an enormous and unfocused enterprise, as are most newspapers. They do too much to be authoritative, but at least they have a system. I landed at the critical section and watch AO Scott talk about 'A Perfect World'. I remember that movie. It was that good. I like Eastwood, he's the generation of man I learned from. You don't think of him as part of a happy young couple, a head banger or somebody who does digital fingerpaint. If the Times did more stories about men of Eastwood's stature, they'd be a smaller business, and better in my estimation. But, there is a need for frills.

Baraka Flaka Flames is a satire video that can be appreciated for what it is, but is better appreciated for what it almost is. It's a multileveled parody of Barack Obama, hoodrat culture and rapper Waka Flocka Flame. I didn't know any of these 'oka nouns until this morning, thanks to the Times. Sometime since I used to hang out there between 1979 and 81, they have changed the name of The Jungle to The Jungles. My estimate is that is because Bloods have split it up. It was still one jungle when Denzel did his movie and the cliche of the hard ghetto backdrop still has currency. The last time I paid attention to such a music video and let it jes grow on me was the introduction of a cat whose name I forget, but who made ... you know, that big hit with all the people dancing in the street and bouncing lowriders and him in the middle of the crowd with his crew... You must have seen it. Seriously, I can't remember. (diligence). Nelly. Country Grammar. Wow, that was a while back. Seems tame.

But the harder rap that Waka Flocka Flame presents is unquestionably in the mainstream of gangsta. What could be more gangsta than being the leader of the mu'fuckin' free ass world?

James Davis, who plays Obama in the video cites as inspiration 'Fear of a Black Hat' and Dave Chapelle, the two most brainy parodies of hiphop and black hoodrat culture. I think he deserves to be in that pantheon in the short subject category.

Over here at Cobb, we mock overserious liberals and their progressive agendas. It doesn't matter what Davis' politics are, he's got the parody smack dabbed. Living in that shadow world of hood-adjacency, in it but not of it, this one rises above and delivers something inescapably wry. It's crazy enough to have a rapper with a name like Waka Flocka Flame, but inspired to take it to this next level. It reminds me of the old crufty mixes of the 70s when somebody would mix in a goofy reporter's fake questions with answers cut from the popular songs of the day. While in some eyes, this might qualify as 'negative images', it will be interesting to see how opinion forms around this video and all that it sends up.

October 25, 2010

One of the cool things about being on the conservative side of life having previously been on the progressive side, is that I have developed senses for the narratives that are supposed to appeal to me as the Peasant I am. Which is to say that since I get propaganda from MoveOn.org as well as RedState.com I'm familiar with the diatribes.

Just a bit ago I tripped by the names of Barthes and Levi-Strauss. By way of my now fully developed conservative spidey senses, I know that I'm supposed to be wary of such French intellectuals and all of their mumbo jumbo, especially Barthes who is one of those guys who talks about coded speech, which is something Progressives like to say we conservatives do when we open our mouths. Be that as it may, there is something I think I like about Structuralism, being a programmer and all.

The last book I finished was a re-read of 'The Diamond Age', and as much as folks like CD hate that I prefer to get my moral instruction from literate fiction instead of social science white papers, I remain addicted to excellent prose and imagination. Which I think rather disqualifies great swaths of post-modern mumbo jumbo and academic publications. I suppose if I could bother to get on with Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments then I might be immune to any tedium. My point however is that one of the striking premises of 'The Diamond Age' is that there is a book that adjusts itself to the young reader and immerses them in a set of instructional and interactive videogames of her own life and education. It is a book to be read over a series of many years. Its adaptation by 50,000 girls known as the Mouse Army fuels a righteous insurrection that begins the overthrow of a corrupt regime.

The interesting thing to me, of course, is the book itself as a mutable lesson, a sort of sandbox RPG of the self full of moral tales and intellectual & moral puzzles. That is not so much the actual story of The Young Lady's Primer, but it's close enough. Barthes for his part in this intrigue is the popularizer of a Russian by the name of Vladimir Propp who authored a book called Morphology of the Folktale. This book is like a Dewey Decimal system of fairy tales, wives tales and all other sorts of basic lit.

There's a joke about a group of comedians who are close friends who know all the jokes being told in the country. Since it's bad form to tell somebody else's joke, this is something they must know. When they get together, all they have to do is tell the punchline and they laugh it up. After a while they come up with a numbering system and all they then have to do is speak the number to illicit guffaws. After a couple years of this, they start to sound like accountants. "42!", Hahaha!. "607!" Heeheee.

Propp is the expert in this field of identifying the skeletal structures of folktales / narratives and categorizing them by type. Wouldn't it be cool to have all of the world's folktales translated into all of the popular languages? With these frameworks, you essentially have a narrative creation machine. It only takes a little imagination to see that there are endless variations on various themes that can be used for just about any purpose. The human mind wants to hear stories. Propp shows the universal framework upon which all such successful stories work their magic.

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Having just finished Vernor Vinge's 'Rainbows End'. I find some of that a bit obscured by the number of characters he uses. Of course I listened to the book rather than read it, and it seemed to go on a bit overlong. The extent to which the intrigue went was not quite deep enough for my fandom, but was nicely blended with a broad cast. There were enough real people in the book to give the events adequate dramatic investment and there was a fair share of twisty stuff, nicely playing on the old crypto-terms of Bob, Alice and the Rabbit.

But the main event of the book, and a constant theme, was the extent to which seemingly spontaneous events might garner global audiences and the monetization of same based upon an adhoc virtual marketplace of labor and consumption was a bit too much. One could think about 'Rainbows End' and 'The Diamond Age' as two ends of a spectrum of market speed and assimilation. In Vinge's world, propriety is reduced to almost nothingness in the events of ordinary people. They live in a cyber-reality-based contest world where people make commercials based on creative tweaks of prior aired commercials. It's a world of long-tail aggregation in the extreme, where competing worldviews don't really exist except as matters of avatar style.

In Vinge's world, the poet is an outcast, isolated and thus seeks the comfort of isolation. Power extends only from military necessity, and entertainment market share. The subversion of network security is the great crime. But surely Vinge didn't mean to describe the whole world in the ways that Stephenson does, consequently his characters are a bit more resilient. It's a good enough story of character in a strange new world.

The point of bringing in Vinge is to consider whether or not it will matter that variations of the enumerated themes of folklore will be human generated or not. The prospect of literary Singularity exists if the voice of the author becomes subjugated to the sweep of the plot within the context of the finite world of the morphologically proper tale. That's where the rubber meets the road. If the author ceases to matter, and all we do is come up with more interesting avatars who do more dramatic things or 'creative' things in the context of the narrative, then that's when we lose. It won't matter if books are virtual or real if that happens. Just like it doesn't matter if we read Harry Potter or watch the Harry Potter film - so long as Rowling disappears.

So what's necessary is the human bit of wrangling over the context of creation. A successful critical thread is the thing that humanizes literary production. What astonishes us is the wisdom of the creator, his grasp of not just morphology but the human condition, and that is gotten through understanding the context of his will to create. This will always differentiate those who write in service to the individual from those in service to the mass market.

October 24, 2010

For the 'Obama Gonna What' files, Faye Anderson is looking to be the black employment watchdog. Her words:

“Let’s work to change the political system, as imperfect as it is. I know people can feel down about the way things are going sometimes here in Washington. I know it’s tempting to give up on the political process ... It’s not enough, but it’s progress. Progress is possible. Don’t give up on voting. Don’t give up on advocacy. Don’t give up on activism. There are too many needs to be met, too much work to be done.”

The swearing-in of the nation’s first African American president heralded a new age of possibilities and responsibilities. History didn’t just happen. History was made when African Americans turned out and voted in record numbers. But the struggle continues.

Tracking Change provides a platform to get involved in the policymaking process. By working together, we can change policies and programs to ensure issues of importance to the African American community are addressed. The issues include racial disparities in employment, federal contracting opportunities, and access to capital and traditional mortgages.

In these challenging economic times, we must do more with less. By harnessing the power of social media and crowdsourcing transparency and accountability, we can more effectively push for change and make our voices heard.

In the Obama administration, policymaking will be transparent, collaborative and participatory. Tracking Change provides timely information about legislation, policies, programs and Federal rules that impact the African American community. Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to organize, and share news and information.

Tracking Change allows advocacy groups and concerned citizens to track and measure progress in select departments and agencies, including the Minority Business Development Agency, Small Businss Administration, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation and Energy. And we will measure change because what gets measured gets done.

Tracking Change shares user-generated ideas and information to bring about the change we seek.

Truth be told, we are the leaders we have been waiting for. We embrace President Franklin D. Roosevelt's advice: “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”

At some point in the past, I put together some decent words about how Obama supporters were going to be inevitably disappointed. I'm just counting the days until the economic disparities on the other side of this continually growing disaster will be blamed on racism - under a black President.

October 23, 2010

Like most thoughtful people here in the States, I've spent some time thinking about Japan. Its people, its language, its culture, its business, its philosophy. I haven't done much of that lately. Now would be a good time to review much of that. With Kikka here, it is a prime opportunity. I have no conclusions about Japan, only impressions and observations on things I have been presented. Here are some that stand out. What are yours?

Firstly, and most unfairly, the most obscene film I have ever witnessed and one of the few movies I have ever walked out on was the infamous 'Legend of the Overfiend'. There is some segment of Japanese society that gets to us via pornography and this piece managed to get a screening at the Angelika Film Center in NYC back in the 90s. It was barking mad. It was so degenerate that it operated at the level of racial paranoia - without much consideration for American perverted demand, it immediately made me hate the Japanese and wonder if they had ever evolved. What kind of sick mind could make such a film and what kind of disgusting society would allow it?

The emotions I have associated with that evening remain powerful. I am going to have to stop writing in order to clear my head.

Secondly, I read Clavell's Shogun many years ago as I was living through a period of disenchantment with American culture. It began as I left college and looked to understand what exactly was beautiful and true about America. I now understand much more about what odds I was against in finding that out from the kind of institutions I had attended. So I had this period of romance with things Asian in general and a few things Japanese in particular. I gained a particular affinity for the martial order of feudal Japan, which in retrospect makes me feel weird - I should examine that. I also studied Sun Tzu and meditated on a daily basis. For a short period of time I had a Japanese girlfriend, but the language and cultural barriers - well it was only slightly more than jungle fever. In all of that, I was seeking what I used to call the 'arena of honor' something I found profoundly lacking in American popular culture. Something resonated in me reading about the life of Mishima, in the silent beauty of Kurosawa's 'Dreams' and in the hope of youth in Otomo's comic masterpiece Akira.

Thirdly, I grew up in a black- and Japanese-American neighborhood. My younger brother's best friend was Japanese American and although we were kids and there wasn't much of what one might deem real cultural exchange, I had the advantage of recognizing Japanese from other Asians. Southern California does have that advantage.

Like many Americans, I came to understand and respect Japanese (via Deming) manufacturing and business practices. I've worked at Toyota and Mitsubishi and recognize the cultural differences of shadow management & group commitment. I've had female relatives work and live in Tokyo and I know my teppan from my donburi.

On the whole, I don't feel a particular affinity for Japan or the Japanese people. They don't quite get me in my soul - which is odd because I feel it for Russians whom I understand less well. Nevertheless, there was a time when they signified a great deal more in my life, through my late 20s a time of great searching for me. I almost feel as if I have unconsciously abandoned them. I haven't done anything to familiarize myself with their music, language or literature of late. I used to follow a blogger who wrote about 'inscrutability' as simply the laziness of American journalists who fail to study the language and appreciate its subtlety. I have had the suppressed desire to study Aikido for half my life and it is something I have never fulfilled. There seems to be something Japanese out there that I've streteched out my arm towards a dozen times but never really bothered to grasp. And so I am merely one step beyond stereotypes. Something, but not much.

October 22, 2010

Fuck Islam. That would be blasphemy if I were serious, but I'm not. But even if I were, would it be like yelling fire in a crowded theater? If it were that theater of the absurd called NPR, then it most certainly would be. Blasphemy is in the ear of the pious rather like beauty or pornography are only subjectively self-evident. In an open and secular society like ours, we consequently should stay away from legal definitions. So the best way to tell if blasphemy occurs is to simply observe the ritual stoning of those found guilty. Which brings us to Juan Williams, his statement, his executioners and his defenders.

Williams, legendary writer of 'Eyes on the Prize' is one of those Americans who has in his age become less tolerant of nonsense. But he has been awfully polite about it. A few years back his 'Enough' was subtitled "The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It". By uttering such words, even as he pointed out the obvious, Williams was on his way out of favor with the conventional Left and coming into prominence on the Right. This shouldn't be a story about Left and Right, then again I shouldn't say "Fuck Islam", but the devil made me do it. Suffice it to say that Williams has strayed from the path of a certain religiosity as well. Him say:

“Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

That's about as polite and qualified as anyone need go and it's miles away from my fake hatred. Notice what Williams didn't say. He didn't say, whenever I think of those people... He didn't say, what I think about Islam is.. He didn't even express antipathy; he said he gets nervous, on a plane, when people are identifying themselves as Muslims on a plane.

For those of us who understand the church that is NPR, familiar as we are with its rites and tone, its shibboleths and fetishes, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that Williams was terminated. It does come as something of a surprise that the language of their dismissal was so terse, given their propensity to overbloviate.

Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret. However, his remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a News Analyst with NPR.

Even having one of their kind sharing the stage with Bill O'Reilly was edgy in the NPR universe, and this feels like one of the 'last straw' excuses, because Juan Williams is not an iconoclast, he's serious. And to take a serious man like Williams at his well-qualified word about the threat some Muslims present is to bring into question the very premise of NPR's direction - which is to defend the sensitivities of Muslims everywhere appropriately the media's voice of multiculturalism.

That NPR can no longer claim Williams is a blow to their credibility but not to their brand. Surely diehard NPR fans have been anticipating Williams' excommunication for several years. And as Williams wrote yesterday, now that he is full-time at Fox, it's on:

[..] To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.

I say an ideological battle because my comments on "The O’Reilly Factor" are being distorted by the self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity. In their hubris they think by talking with O’Reilly or Hannity I am lending them legitimacy. Believe me, Bill O’Reilly (and Sean, too) is a major force in American culture and politics whether or not I appear on his show.

Years ago NPR tried to stop me from going on "The Factor." When I refused they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

Many years ago, when I first began to take my writing public, I wished that news media would be more up front with their biases. What I didn't quite realize was that they always were, and that if you read enough, you would be able to see through the style of objectivity to the substance of their subjectivity. I had expected a bit too much from the business and the bias that I was seeing, I thought was exceptional rather than the rule. Now I know to trust the writer and the writer alone, and to distrust the robot writing that indicates editorial control. We have been losing writers and gaining media. And Williams now stands at Fox.

There is talk of lawsuits, not simply because of Williams' firing, but because the influence that CAIR may have had on NPR, now that it's clearer than ever that they take institutional money from a broader class of donors than the national public. This is a feud that is fraught with symbolism. I take it to be indicative of the overreach and self-righteousness of Progressives (as I usually do) in their assertion of a monopoly on what is true and good for the American public to hear. It is entirely consistent that Williams be drummed out of their corps. I for one salute Williams again. He told a small truth about himself and was crucified by people who are showing their true selves. What more could we ask for?

October 21, 2010

I broke a promise inadvertently and then somewhat purposefully. I watched an HBO show. This one stars Steve Buscemi and is full of topless women, sadistic cops and sleazy situations. One scene stands out in my mind this morning.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is a foil for my conservatism, as he stands for the more ugly end of revolution, that which is arbitrarily against human institutions in and of themselves. The romance of Rousseau is about the natural beauty of the unadorned human spirit. This morning over at First Things, RR Reno writes of Rousseau:

Here, I think, we approach deepest appeal of the bohemian mystique. Because Rousseau shamelessly reveals his sometimes “vile and despicable” actions, he shows himself to be just that: shame-less, a person free from psychological bondage to the oppressive and corrupting judgments of others. This tell-all freedom functions as a peculiarly modern form of innocence.

Or at least it functions as a gambit to gain the moral authority of innocence, which involves invulnerability to judgment—and to do so without having to be innocent. If I write a memoir that recounts my romances with transgression in the spirit of proud announcement rather than regret, I’m demonstrating my psychological independence from social norms. I’m outwitting the judgments of others by defiantly announcing my own failures.

There was a scene in the episode of the HBO show that I was watching in which a gangster's moll is trying out new clothes. She stands naked in the mirror as an immigrant woman, newly hired, attends her. This was one of many scenes in which the characters linger overlong in what generally passes quickly in your standard vulgar entertainment. It suddenly appeared to me that the length of the scenes are an invitation for the audience to become that person for that moment which doesn't exist for any other purpose than to embody the basic titillation.

What you can see in this still I was able to capture is the haughty attitude the woman has towards her servant. What can only be seen by watching the episode is the scene in which the moll holds her hands above her head fully naked as the servant stoops at her feet and pulls up a camisole, head bent down in shame at the crotch level of an utterly shameless woman.

Nudity means one thing in private with oneself, another in private with a loved one. But what about nudity in front of an one considered inferior? It is a striking moment of powerful filmmaking to stage such a scene and to evoke the absolute power of one over another. It is a moment of contempt that the audience is invited to savor and one of those commodifying images of women that I find so subversive of our dignity. It is the reason I shield myself from HBO as they move their dramatic series from corruption to corruption according to their tried and true formula - the challenged kingpin surrounded by crime and perversion. This time, Atlantic City during Prohibition.

The characters of the HBO dramatic series are all shameless and innocent by our standards. We in the audience are to understand that they live in a distant and dangerous world in which survival depends on doing dirt. There are no options for their dignity. And so we can manage to ingest all of the 'adult' situations for which their TV-MA ratings are well deserved. All the main characters suffer little from the misery of their predicaments except for the protagonist, who must be ruthless and sensitive at once. It is by drawing attention to the existential suffering of the protagonist that these shows manage to keep the attention in the more lurid offerings. For example, there is not only the haughty nude, but there is a brutal interrogation, a gruesome surgical procedure and a scene showing the results of a lynching.

How this has become an entertainment may or may not speak to a problem afflicting America in general. America is not necessarily in tune with HBO. But I think it's a fair assessment of the attraction to the bohemian - the romance to be had with those who are quick to flaunt social convention, and more particularly the emotion of shame. This is the creation of Hollywood that wins awards year after year, and speaks loudly about the tastes of its critical profession.

It is my hope that this thread of shamelessness will be one of the many that may seem too big to fail at the moment but will eventually collapse. Yet we have seemingly done a good job in preparing a generation to consume that which now commonly goes by the acronym NSFW - not safe for work. There is no irony in that acronym, celebration of the bohemian is antithetical to productive work. When our need to work, which must be invested with meaning and dignity is sufficient, then we will avoid such corruptions, and with any luck we'll see back to Rousseau and find little to admire in the implications of his dirty romance.

October 20, 2010

I have regained a snarky sense of humor. This new tool allows me to put together an extended dialog. Of course this is a meditation on healing and curing, victimization, responsibility and 'empowerment'. Lovely.

October 19, 2010

I think not. But it is the end of capital markets as we knew them a couple years ago.

I just started to understand the rudiments of financial engineering back when I read Derman's 'My Life as a Quant'. The career I might have had, if I had stayed in NYC, would have been to be a programmer for the guys on Wall Street. I often think about the moola I might have made, but actually it's the technology that excites me. On the other hand I might have just been another tool at Bloomberg. But what's clear is that there have been a number of technological innovations over the past two dozen years that have given brokerage houses enormous power in altering the physics of trading securities. In addition, there has been, like with CAD, a revolution in the types of financial instruments that can be created. I can remember when stocks weren't traded in pennies. Don't you?

Sheila Bair rightly said that financial institutions are providing too much fake money into the GDP. Our nation should not expect upwards of 30% of GDP to come from the finance industry. It has become too self-serving and not serving enough of the nation's proper economy. We shouldn't make so much money just by playing with money, but by creating goods and services that people need.

We need to get back to a world where our financial sector supports the functioning of our economy, and not the other way around. And we need to fix what caused the crisis by reforming our mortgage lending and securitization practices. Only by getting back to basics in these most fundamental areas of our financial system can we begin to restore balance to our broader economy and confidence in our economic future.

As I think about the future of the US economy, there are several things that stick out in my mind.

1. Biotech is the future.

2. Smart money will remain in America

3. Fewer banks is OK.

4. Chimerica will continue.

But here's the big thing. My goto guy, David Goldman says we're going into a zombie bank economy. It basically means that the banks will not take risks, they will not lend much. It will slow the entire economy. To me that means people sitting on capital are going to slowly bleed it rather than to aggressively risk it. The institutions that could more or less guarantee >7% returns on capital just won't be able to.

I can't predict much from that. I can't tell if that's good or bad for the innovative businessman. On the one hand, I think money would get clubby as it is now and only go to super safe investments like US Treasuries. On the other hand, the opportunity to make a killing just making regular businesses smarter is very real. There will be *some* growth industries in America, even if that growth is only 8%. It won't be the whole economy, but when Wall Street was promising that, it was all bubble anyway.

Capitalism isn't going away. This is just the business cycle reminding us that it's permanent. Nobody is inventing a new kind of accounting, and accounting standards are going global and getting written into the substrate of IT. The human race doesn't even know another way to think about money other than through the tools capitalism has provided.

October 17, 2010

I have failed to move the discussion here into orderly buckets. I think we've made a hash of the Equality Math comments. It is just impossible in this format to keep track of the tangents. I have no idea what's going on in there, and I'm scared and fatigue to go in and trip over a mind mine. Something that will blow up in my head and compel me to go in and say something, and oh by the say something else..

Of course it occurs that my and Kali's solution works best - to number and name subtopics and tangents. And when possible I'll take those tangents to the top in a new post, which may or may not die from lack of interest. When tangents come, I'll categorize them in Brain Spew and try to locate the center of gravity.

I won't ask you to italicize in response to specific quotes, but it's a good idea. CNu does a great job with that and I think it's an example worth following, but numbering and naming is just as good and better for me to identify subtopics to break out.

I would also encourage you to use bitly if you're going to embed longer URLs. Otherwise just use the full "A" tag.

It occurred to me this morning in thinking about getting into some new technology that there's an important way to think about what kind of projects your organization can afford. I call it the Resource Triangle.

We all know the project triangle. When it comes to building a technological solution, you have to pick two. It can be good and fast, but it won't be cheap, etc. But that only comes after you know exactly what it is you're going to build. What if you don't know? What if you don't have a blueprint?

As a review of resources to be deployed for a project a different dynamic is afoot and the blueprint is key. These three constraints are working in tandem. If you have plenty of time, and money to buy expertise, then you will evolve a system through some trial and error that will likely be the best. If you have money for expertise and a blueprint, you expect to save time. Here's the plan, you did this before, now do it again, andele! If you have plenty of time and you know what it is you want to build, then you can save money on staffing - grow your expertise inhouse without paying a premium for consultants. The trial and error expresses itself in the growing efficiency of your staff.

In my experience, the worst of all worlds is when a blueprint is made, a deadline is set and money is spent at a high rate. There are two reasons. The first is that blueprints are shaky. Youu may know exactly what you need to get done, but you may have missed something in your specification of the blueprint. Your deadline approaches and you will find yourself making sacrifices in quality in order to meet the deadline. Missing the deadline is an exercise in soft dollars, meanwhile you are paying hard dollars to your staff and likely whipping them into a lather. Now you've got a blueprint that's been violated, maybe a cash flow problem, and probably declining morale.

October 16, 2010

I shouldn't have expected so much math as I wanted to see in 'Doing the Equality Math', because it basically got into a clash of philosophies and then went far off track. The essential quality of that thread was lost. What I really wanted, essentially, was some definition of Affirmative Action II, a budget, a schedule and an agenda.

I sort of intended it to be a trap, and it did spring in exactly the default way I expected, which was basically getting Progressives to show that they couldn't give a budget, a schedule and an agenda if their lives depended on it - that they are invested it permanent insatiable revolution.

So while that's not explicitly proven, why don't we give combatants a chance to spew about the arena of Entitlements - which is essentially the discretionary spending of a government that has decided long ago to appropriate more than is required for simple Constitutional defenses. And so to the questions.

October 15, 2010

In order to see the implications of exactly what that means, I suspect you would need to be a computer scientist, or a philosopher. I'm some fraction of both of those as is clearly my intent, but I cannot tell you precisely how much. Perhaps I'm 75% of a proper computer scientist. Perhaps I'm 68% of a proper philosopher. What those exact, factual percentages are, I don't know, nor do I care. I simply know that I am. If someone were to tell me today, by way of some odd Stanford-Binet exactly what percentage I am of each, then that's for today, but what will it be tomorrow? If my number fell below 50% would I not be enough to be considered any fraction? That's a subjective question, a subjective question consisting of facts.

What I have done in my life is upscale my philosophical frameworks. I am one of those American children I perceive to be rare that never heard the word 'Jesus' spoken around the home until he was in the fourth grade. I could be considered in no way a Christian and for the purposes of my life until then (and actually some time after) it was not necessary or important. It is also well known at Cobb that I was, under the same influence of my philosophically evolving parents, a Black Cultural Nationalist. And then a student of the Jesuits and then a confirmed Episcopalian, and then a Multiculturalist, an organic, and now some evolving flavor of Conservative intrigued with the spirit of the American Revolution and how it is exactly that Margaret Thatcher figured out all of the social dependencies of the core rights of property. I cobbled all of those things together in the way a beaver builds a dam, or perhaps more appropriately as a magpie feathers her nest.

At the age of 23, I made a profound discovery in the pages of Hofstadter's G.E.B. which was of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem. The implications were that every philosophy is incomplete or inconsistent, or if you translated that into the argot of computer programming, there is always some input that can crash the system. Why wasn't my pre-Christianity good enough? Why was my Black Nationalism insufficient? What was wrong about those Jesuits? How could the Episcopalians go so sideways? How did multiculturalism beget that awful PC? And what exactly was that awful Paul Bremer thinking? Every system has its limitations. There is, somewhere, a single fact that renders the whole beast.

In computing it tends not to be the numerical value of the fact, but the sheer volume of them that must be processed. We test for conditions. Zero, One, and some number approaching infinity as well as the condition of having no numbers with no values at all. The robust system is architected to handle greater and greater amounts of complexities. It's rather like Apple's store - they've got an app for that.

In philosophy as well, it is the anticipation of the obscure fact that makes one the opposite of reactionary which is robust. It is the ability to handle the unforeseen implications of some combination of facts that makes for the greatest value. It is to keep the enterprise running.

In compute hardware, it's relatively easy to crash or hijack a system. You simply give it a contradiction or turn it back on itself so that it cannot do anything but try to resolve its own impossibility. You find its Goedelian hitch and send off the virus. In human minds, it's very difficult to do. We go into denial, or selective memory or something. The aim to keep the hardware running and ready is paramount. So, I believe it is with systems of humans - societies. Societies are inconsistent. Societies are inconsistent!

I am not fact based, meaning I judge myself not in terms of streams of facts, but in my ability to process them consistently to a philosophy. I hope my philosophy expands to be able to handle a larger set of facts, but it's not so important to me what the facts are, but that they never crash my system. Likewise as I look at society I want it to be robust in such a way that the facts of the individuals within them don't crash the principles of that society.

--

When I was the Boohab, my job was to be a 'persistent black object'. In that, I made myself into a striking racial artifact aimed to crash lots of systems. That was fun. But that was a decade ago.

October 14, 2010

These are the Nazi Party's 25 Points - It's Core Manifesto: See for yourself.

1. We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples.

2. We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain shall be abrogated.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population.

4. Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be a countryman.

5. Those who are not citizens must live in Germany as foreigners and must be subject to the law of aliens.

6. The right to choose the government and determine the laws of the State shall belong only to citizens. We therefore demand that no public office, of whatever nature, whether in the central government, the province, or the municipality, shall be held by anyone who is not a citizen.

We wage war against the corrupt parliamentary administration whereby men are appointed to posts by favor of the party without regard to character and fitness.

7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.

8. Any further immigration of non-Germans must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, shall be compelled to leave the Reich immediately.

9. All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.

10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.

Therefore we demand:

11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.

12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.

15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.

17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.

20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.

21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.

22. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.

23. We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberatepolitical lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:

(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.

(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.

(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the non-Germans from the Reich.

Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.

24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the pinciple:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.

The formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.

The leaders of the party undertake to promote the execution of the foregoing points at all costs, if necessary at the sacrifice of their own lives.

There's much controversy and reaction over Jonah Goldberg's book about fascism. And there's no doubt that the Third Reich was fascist, but it was socialist and racist too. What part? I think it's easy to read. Now how much these principles described what policies were enacted or what the people's reaction to them was is something I don't know. But I can see what's obviously socialist here. Can you?

Stiglitz is the darling economist of the Democrats & Left as it stands. He and they have been consistent enough in their points of view to become a decent and reasonable target for whatever coordinated opposition there might be.

It has been a while since I've been tuned into the daily operations of the markets. About six or eight months ago, not long after Bloomberg started charging for their podcasts, I dropped out. I had also decided to return to Miller's Alley, tired of finding myself disenchanted with things over which I have only partial understanding and even neglible control. I did play the market for a quarter, and I got about 8%. But my focus has changed to more prosaic concerns. While I still await Taleb's next book, I've unsubscribed from Roubini's daily updates. Essentially the last event for me was the hearings on Goldman Sachs. Since then, not so much.

So it's good to know that the mention of Stiglitz still gives me heartburn. I interpret him to be a government supply-sider. If the government spends it, it will multiply, is probably Stiglitz in a nutshell. I welcome a more sophisticated and nuanced interpretation.

At my level of engagement with American business, which is basically an understanding of how F1000 companies budget, plan and manage their moola from an accounting systems point of view - and also how many companies manage professional talent, I have a touch of jaundice. What I tend to believe to be the case is that a certain class of business managers are essentially irreplaceable and immune. As such there are plenty myths propogated in the political sphere about a raft of virtues that they essentially don't have. Similarly there are an equal number of myths propogated about their corruption, which is similarly overstated. Edison's aphorism is appropriate. It's 99% perspiration.

Similarly in matters of government the Right is often guilty of overstating the virtues of military service and the Left of bureaucrats and agencies at intersection of the social sciences and public policy. I strongly suspect those two are mostly sweaty enterprises into which wisdom and inspiration injections are generally minimal.

So what are the chances that anybody who wins a Nobel Prize in anything can actually be right enough about something large, like the fate of the American economy, and pull together what's necessary to effect change? That is to say, responsibly. I say the chances are slim, but the effort is worth it. And so into the arena of famousity, a number of economic hats and theories are tossed. I happen to like a guy named Zingales, who clearly demonstrated the proper answer to the problem of foreclosure and toxic mortgages as well as the reason why his answer would not be taken up. The great Paul Volcker, who essentially stopped the inflation we say in the early 80s, has been reduced to an eponymous rule which may or may not prove to be just another boulder in a river of dodgy arbitrage. And of course Summers and Geithner, brilliant as they may be have used quantitative easing to give us historically low mortgage interests rates that nobody actually qualifies for because banks make money on the carry trade in Treasuries, not on lending to Americans. Stiglitz and stimulus are peas in a pod, but it's not working. His answer seems to be, stimulate more - you're not doing enough. It's gotta be trillions, evidently.

I seem to recall some mumbling about VAT for the US. And what annoys Progressives most about the Tea Party movement is their minimalist approach to taxation which of course jeopardizes all of their lovely and heartfelt humanitarian impulses made manifest by government spending. So the temptation to look over at Europe and other Western democracies with effective tax rates that sometimes double ours must be irresistable. And cracking the rhetorical whip over the backs of Republicans, given the moral smugness of pacifists and general anti-American grumbling, is a favorite pasttime. Why not have higher taxes?, they say. It must be ignorance and immorality.

From my point of view, it all rather comes down to the virtue or vice of deficit spending. And I am convinced that the multipliers of government stiumulus are simply not there. But even if they were and if Stiglitz were right, how much do we become state capitalists? And what kind of state capitalists would we be?

It was Noam Chomsky who convinced me back in the mid80s before businesses would allow UNIX into their IT shops that America under Reagan had become Military State Capitalist. I agreed with his rhetoric that all of our science and technology expertise was going from Electrical Engineering school into the Military Industrial Complex. And I couldn't argue, because way back in those days I was already using email. But was the public in on email? No way buddy. My buddy Greg put it the best way I thought possible. "If I want to buy my sweetheart a new fur coat, I have to design a new missle." Greg was one of the smartest guys I knew and in 1986 he was dead right. Now there is venture capital and iPads. Then, there was Raytheon, Northrop and Bunker-Ramo.

My guess is that we'd become a Healthcare Industrial Complex under Obama's State Capitalism, but that's just a silly guess. What would Stiglitz really have us stimulate and where would his multipliers multiply? Qui bono?

October 13, 2010

A long time ago, I put together a manpower planning system for a Fortune 50 company. It was one of those opportunities for me to see something most people don't see. I learned some valuable lessons. I'd like to repeat one or two of them here. It's an old argument that I used to call 'Angry White Math' in defense of Affirmative Action. As it turns out I'm going to use that same math for another purpose which is to demonstrate why it is I believe that Progressives are shrill.

As we got into some details about my fact-free philosophical reconnoitering it was suggested that the numbers are on 'the side' of people who constantly argue against racism and sexism. So exactly how much of that argument is just self-righteous moralizing? Well that's a subjective question. But see if you can follow along with the following mathematical syllogism which I replicate in its original idiotic form from 12 years ago:

america 1998 - population approximately 260 million

black population approximately 32 million.

question: what is the effect of affirmative action on 'white' employment?

so we have to find 8 million jobs, that would leave the non-black workforce with 98 million jobs.

therefore the net non-black unemployment rate would go from 50% down to 0%

the non-black unemployment rate would go from 0% to 7.017%

this is an absolutely rediculous worse-case scenario. but several things become immediately clear which debunk a lot of angry white math against affirmative action.

1. under the worst of all circumstances, affirmative action could only affect about 1 out of every 14 non-black jobs.

2. black unemployment is nowhere near 50%, it's not even at 25%, it's closer to half that. so that makes the maximum reasonable number of zero-sum replacement jobs 2 million.

3. it is not a fair assumption that affirmative action is applied everywhere - at least 50% of all american employment comes from firms which are too small to be bound to affirmative action rules. that drops the maximum to 1 million.

4. those one million jobs against a black unemployment rate of 12.5% would cut black unemployment in half to 6.25%

so let's do another re-assessment.

given: non-black unemployment is 6.25% it would take something less than 1 million zero-sum jobs to give racial parity in employment. so far, affirmative action hasn't come close. so it stands to reason that white displacement is a myth, and that affirmative action has yet to cost non-black america one million jobs. out of a total workforce of 130 million, that is 7/10's of a percent of all american jobs.

but let's double it, just to be on the safe side. affirmative action covers less than 1.5% of all the jobs in america. which don't all belong to whites, but to asians and latinos as well. furthermore, everybody should know that the largest class of affirmative action beneficiaries are white women.

so i think i have pretty much destroyed the economic case for angry white math, proving once and for all that the primary obstacle to affirmative action is RESENTMENT, not ECONOMICS.

I welcome challenges to my syllogism.

So here we have to inject a little reality and update the numbers. Nationally, unemployment is somewhere around 9.5 percent. I don't know what black unemployment is. Let's guess that it is triple the national average. So let's say it's 28.5% Let us further assume that all the racism of America is expressed in the loss of black jobs. So let us therefore invent, under the Obama Administration, the Department of Racial Payback. If you are black and unemployed, it will be automatically assumed that racism is the cause. Show up at the office and the Department will get you a job. Boom. So how many jobs will the DRP have to produce to provide magical equality and destroy all of the effects of racism? How many if they are zero-sum jobs? How many if they are new jobs? OK well assuming we use the following figures.

Non-Zero Sum Parity requires 1.66M new jobs. I don't have a spreadsheet on this machine so I can't figure out the zero-sum parity. But it would be less than 1.66M. Now, what does it take to create somewhere around 1.66 new jobs, or fire around 1.4M folks and give their jobs to unemployed blacks? Something close to an act of God in either case, especially if in the second case you don't want riots in the streets.

It's obvious to me, as it should be to you, that x years Affirmative Action was insufficient to close the gap in black vs non-black unemployment. But it's also obvious to me that when you norm for education and class, the gap in black vs non-black unemployment drops significantly. I'm sure anyone focused on such mathematical ways of looking at people would provide us with those vetted statistics, right?

So how exactly do Progressives measure the effect of racism on their protected classes and how big are those gaps? It's not clear. But it's clear to me that the claim of a goal of statistical equality begs for acts of God. And what exactly are the areas in which Progressives get hyped about gaps explained by racism? Let me not put words in their mouths. But let us examine the costs of such things as zero sum Affirmative Action that will close the gap.

I think that an honest discussion of this, loaded to the gills with statistics will reveal several acts of God, not to mention acts of Congress and huge amounts of money. Then how is it that we maintain the status quo without riots in the streets? This is the great dilemma of the Progressive mindset. It is my opinion that they cannot quite understand why the outrage is always in their heads and not in the people, and that an economic accounting of all of the relevant factors shows that all of the outrage is priced out of the equation. In other words, just like there is Angry White Math over the existence of Affrmative Action, when you look at what's actually being done, the outrage is all out of proportion. On the exact other side of the coin, there is Angry Progressive Politics over the existence of disparities, but when you look at what it actually costs to eliminate those disparities to the standard of 'equality', and see how it is that society continues to function without that elimination, you see that the outrage is similarly out of proportion.

I specifically ask for ways and means to have solutions to these problems that are objective. If racism weighs six pounds, then the six pound adjustment cures racism and everybody can agree. The important question between liberals and conservatives is where you take those six pounds of flesh, from public or private hands. The answer I stereotypically expect is that the only way America can get six pounds of flesh for every victim of racism is through compelled state action. I would actually be happy to hear such a straight answer, because the six pounds would be quantified objectively.

Since 2001, and in dealing with the then-pressing issue of Reparations, I have looked at the economics. And my premise has been simple. We are at racial equilibrium in reality. But political resentment and outrage cannot accept that. I don't disagree that the outrage is moral, but that doesn't change the fact that it is insufficient to dramatically alter the status quo and provide funding for the solutions whatever they may be. This would not be a political problem if Progressives could see their way around to a privately funded solution. Instead their poltical opponents are blamed for *all* racism because of their refusal to consent to a state sponsored solution - whose dimensions if honestly reckoned with, would require an act of God.

So the challenge remains which is something you can unanimously get ascent to from 90% of the Right. If you can solve any problem with racism or sexism or both with a Federal tax ceiling of 20%, it gets done tomorrow. If it costs 40%, it gets done when hell freezes over. There's plenty room for negotiation, and that's how the parties go back and forth forever. But we still don't honestly know what the cost for the solution to racism is.

The following is from Boston.com. I understand this quite well. I've thought about it a lot as part of my profession.

It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

I expect to gain great insights when Taleb publishes his next book which will highlight what ain't right with brains that are convinced - maybe giving us a way to understand, discount and moderate false conviction. I will reiterate a couple of my standing propositions at this point.

1. It takes energy and effort to establish and sustain any idea in the public sphere. The more detailed the information, and the more people, the more energy and attention required. Conversely, small tightly knit groups can be convinced of almost anything.

2. When it comes to policy making and the enforcement of law, it is better to expend less energy and on fewer matters. The high energy required to establish and maintain a regime of truth and discipline to that truth is corrupting.

I beleive that political thought, works exactly like the article says, because it tries to establish, at bottom, justification for actions & policy based on a moral purpose. When facts do not conform to the moral premises they are percieved as noise or deception.

October 11, 2010

Here is a comment I wrote that's too big to fit over at NewSavanna. Check it out.

You may have heard that Ebert’s been kicking up a fuss about video games. He doesn’t think that they can ever be art. This little tempest in a teapot led him to Tweet and then blog a simple question: “Which of these would you value more? A great video game. Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.” The answer came back 13,823 to 8,088 in favor of video games.

And so Ebert posted that result to his blog, while also admitting that there was nothing remotely scientific about his procedure. It’s just an informal question, with an answer that didn’t please him. And he launches into a defense and justification of literature without, however, saying anything more against video games. For the moment, that’s done and gone.

Right now there are legions of video games that allow you to walk in the shoes of characters with different backgrounds. The best of these provide and extraordinary experience. None so legendarily riveting as one of the early Call of Duty series that put you on Omaha Beach. It was, in just about every way, equal to the cinematic experience of Spielberg's opening to Saving Private Ryan, except that your character dies. You die over and over again from acts of violence whose origin you are incapable of determining. There is no strategy or tactic you can use to think your way up the beach. You simply die 10 or 12 times, and then by sheer luck you live and continue the game.

There are few ways to express the horror of war that are more impressive than that. You get your orders, you have your rifle, you move forward through chaos expecting to win, and you lose. Over and over again, you lose. You contribute a pile of bodies to the gory landscape as you recognize that there actually can be no war narrative as subtle and compelling as your game experience. Nobody survives it.

The power of historical simulations in the narrative form of Call of Duty may be instructive, depending on the intent of the authors, but nothing is quite as immersive as those 'period pieces' we refer to as sandbox RPGs.

An RPG is a role-playing game. You inhabit a character which is either a pre-selected individual whose skills you can modify slightly through gained experience, or whose appearance and characteristics you can modify greatly. A sandbox game in one in which you are given a very large area in which to play - a realm as it were, and whose specific narrative is addressed at your leisure.

In a game like Call of Duty, you are assigned missions and you work with your squadmates (either real people online, or AIs) to accomplish them. There is nothing else to do and you must walk a narrow path. For example, you are walking through a shallow river in a jungle on a Pacific Island - your mission is to destroy a Japanese weapons depot. Enemies snipe at you in the river canyon. All you can do is evade them, shoot back and get to the ammo dump alive, then blow it up. Mission accomplished. Next mission.

In a sandbox game, you are in a wide open space, 1945 Brooklyn perhaps, and now home from the war you are to find a job in the mob. But you can stop and shop, talk to neighbors and waste as much time as you like interacting with people who are non-essential to the primary plot. These may be mini-missions, like find a cheating husband, or a missing child which only serve to shape your character independent of the primary mission. It is almost unanimous that the two greatest sandbox RPGs are Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption. One set in contemporary NYC and the other on the border of Texas & Mexico circa 1900.

Games such as these challenge designers to create a verisimilitude that will engage gamers as long as a good book would. One generally expects to finish a straight mission based game like Call of Duty in under 10 hours. But a sandbox RPG like Mafia 2 or Fallout 3 contain easily 60 hours of immersion. To complete every main and side quest in such games can easily take double that amount of time. And recall that in most sandbox games, your actions change the character. So often gamers will play the entire game as a good person and then replay the entire game as an evil person.

The opportunity for critical evaluation of video games as literature is enormous. The difficulty is that the bulk of the industry is perceived callously by intellectuals, who are invariably not gamers. And because games are sophisticated, it's not easy to become one.

One commonly cited reason that games are dismissed is because of their violent content. It is reasonable to note that violence is part of the attraction of many many video games. But the same can be said of Western movies. A war simulation as a first person shooter is about as hacked a genre as cowboys and indians. But there are better and worse, and the proper role of the critic is to nudge the art along.

I think this will inevitably happen because the bandwidth for games is so broad. Unlike with hiphop, I think the lack of intellectual criticism will not hinder the aesthetic value of video games. They are much too expensive an enterprise and require too much collaborative creativity to continue on momentum alone. And quite frankly, outside the MSM, there is some serious gamer crit.

Even though he is employed by Microsoft, a cat named 'Major Nelson' sets a fairly high standard for commentary. The most widely know critics are G4TV's Adam Sessler and Morgan Web. They've been in the business for over a decade, and more and more often, in almost every one of their daily shows called X-Play they queue the phrase 'brutally honest review' for games you know are going to suck.

There are artists in the realm of video game design and production, and while blockbuster titles tend to make all the moola, there is an 'indie' spirit that is alive and well in the industry. But overall, the industry is just at that point where technology is beginning to matter less and less, and richer stories, characters and experiences are required. I don't think you'll find anyone who could dismiss the richness of the worlds created in games like Bioshock and Mass Effect 2. Is it art? If anyone could possibly consider Roger Corman an artist, then video games have been art for a long time. Is it fine art? It's getting close.

October 10, 2010

Kali Tal was the first intellect online who grasped my attention and reached out to me personally when I was looking at the intersection of race, identity and cyber presence. I have since discussed any number of subject tangential to identity and the metaphysics of online discourse with her. I have always found her to be a good sounding board and sometimes bullseye for that path which I estimate I might have taken were I convinced that our future is best defined by the Progressive politics. In that, we share a classic liberal optimism for objective investigation of what's wrong and scientific discipline in determining how best to solve problems in society. More importantly we share a skepticism of wishful thinking and deceptive populism that informs most of the talking points of America political debate. I welcome her here to Cobb to discuss at some length the issues that face America with regard to its ideas about women, sexuality, the family, marriage how that coalesces into something beyond common sense in our culture and politics.

I started this debate, which I now hope to rescue from the format and control of Facebook, with a pique about the apparent defection of Rebecca Walker from the anti-family provocations of her famous and feminist mother Alice Walker. The younger Walker, a (former?) lesbian mother living with the father of her young son, rejoices in the joys of motherhood much to the dismay and consternation of the elder who refuses to speak to her daughter or even see her now five year old grandchild. Rebecca now stands in rebuke to that which has passed as good advice to women to which I say bravo.

My fundamental issue is with a raft of ideas which could roughly be called feminist that have arisen to redefine what a family unit is or should be. This arises out of my long standing rejection of the counter-cultural aspects of 'The Sixties' which have been, irrevocably it seems, linked to the liberation of 'people of color', the Civil Rights Movement and the general idea of liberty and progress. I stand with a varied body of critics on the Right who take issues and potshots from the deep trenches of the Culture Wars initiated in the mid 80s around the same time as the term 'African-American' was born and the inception of multiculturalism.

I find an irascible fetishistic regard for 'difference' as yet another symptom of shallow identity politics and an ever-broadening definition of 'rights' which have no right being called rights, but are ultimately anti-social privileges being demanded by a movement that seeks to dominate moral discourse and quell dissent. I see this as part an parcel of an insatiable demand for all the 'progress' social scientists can promise at a pace which is unsustainable and destabilizing to American society. There is no better example of this than the unequivocal demand for the redefinition of marriage consequent with the rejection of civil union and the utter contempt with which religious traditions are held who seek to protect their own ways. But while that matter boils on the front burner, what has been baking for years are deeper questions about the American family and what our nation (of laws) and society (of men) can and should do to protect and sustain it.

My critical stance which I am perfectly comfortable as calling 'conservative' or 'Right' is only informed by not defined by those schools of thought. I am not out to bash what's new, I'm oriented towards saving what's true. It must be said that my livelihood exists in an industry that didn't when I was born - there are few things more progressive than the IT business which is constantly suffused with change. But in this as in any human endeavor there are principles which are as immutable as the function of human organs - which is to say, they simply don't evolve on any timescale our politics and thinking might like them to. Just as 010 + 010 = 100 (in binary), the stomach will digest what it can. As much as we'd all like to end world hunger and thirst, we cannot eat wood and we cannot drink seawater. And so there is a finite limit to useful human behavior much experimentation with which is a waste of time, sometimes deceptive and often a distraction from what is true and ought to be.

I am fatigued of the noisome politics associated with the tinkering of gender and identity and family which have suffused American life, not only because it is vapid and vulgar but because so much of it is just wrong. Nuff said. Kali and I and you will engage on a mission to give some insight into how much fiddling we ought to afford and what might be the consequences of such messing about.

--

I'll start with my essential premise which is that for the majority of human history such as I can gauge it, we have been ruled by kings and tribal chiefs and that our ideas about honor and dignity flow from such feudal arrangements. I believe that there is something fundamental and hardwired in human circuitry to give us such ideas as 'honor thy father and mother'. I want, of necessity, to keep in mind the permanence of human conflict - of war - and of the ways and means humans employ to survive instinctively and to maintain their populations in hard times. I think we have the frivolous desire to define ourselves into arbitrary social arrangements that cannot and will not survive human conflict and that these desires fuel the raisons d'etre of today's social fiddlers. Instead, we should reform our society in such ways as it remains fundamentally robust in the ways and means that have gotten us from pre-history to now and that the overwhelming majority of us remain politically and socially invested in these tried and true conventions. I assert that without commitment to conformity all of our experimentation, all of our liberty, all of our tolerance comes to naught.

October 08, 2010

Rebecca Walker is in the news again. Why? Because she's more normal than her famous mother, and now she's dredging up the awful truth.

I love my mother very much, but I haven't seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son - her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.

Well, so be it. My mother may be revered by women around the world - goodness knows, many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it's time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution.

I couldn't predict at the time that the battle would get to be such a heated one. But I did see that Rebecca Walker was heading to directly contradict a lot of what passes for feminist wisdom a few years ago when I was working in Philadelphia. Back then I wrote:

Walker's audience was largely comprised of women who have not suffered through the cleansing agony of childbirth, and one could sense their conflict and ambivalence from a distance. Walker is a master of talking to them straight and guiding them gently. She's got a writer's honesty and self-knowledge. As I surfed her website and perused her bio, I found she's got much experience talking to young folks such as these.

There is genuine confusion and empathy. A thousand conversations that cannot occur in bars await the patient author on book tours. I could feel the tender tendrils extending as each young person walked up to the table after the talk. With one in particular whom I seem to recall in a denim skirt, the two women reminded me of my own two daughters whispering to each other. Oh how women talk. And where else could they go but to each other?

They can come to me, because in the end, big brother that I am, I spent most of the evening acquainting myself with a universalized version of this ritual. How can I protect this, I kept asking myself. How can I keep this part of society working? How can I recognize this from the fraud of eclexia? Walker invoked he who is Chesterton in my mind when she expressed that family works and has worked for hundreds and thousands of years, and 'we' shouldn't be so quick to dismiss its value. She recognizes what era she's living in, and said that those are dangerous words in some quarters. I imagine she would know that very well.

Well now it's clear that Rebecca Walker is one of us. She has, through her own experience as a mother, found the true meaning of life by creating life and protecting life. I'm going to keep her in mind more and more knowing that she has joined the battle. And in case you decide not to read the full piece that I linked to, let me give you a small piece that makes it all very clear.

A good mother is attentive, sets boundaries and makes the world safe for her child. But my mother did none of those things.

Although I was on the Pill - something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend - I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don't remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I'd never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

Well. Not much ambiguity there. I was just writing about the Peasant Box. Another reason I am conservative has to do with my rejection of the counter-cultural movement that was baked into the narrative of The Sixties. It continues to be assumed, quite falsely, that black Americans wanted hippie, pacifist, sexual revolution as part and parcel of the defense of their Civil Rights. That to be black was to be against the War in Vietnam, and everything white parents appeared to be to their idiot baby boom children. It was that reactionary rebellion that made stars of people like Alice Walker and others who were part of Black Radical Chic. And to this day 'black culture' continues to be a foil for a 'white culture' meaning two parent families, marriage and a lack of radical politics.

The myth continues, but Rebecca Walker is not pretending and playing nice any longer. Good.

I am bound to follow up on the discussion of the music that made me, the albums that I obsessed over in my youth. There's just stuff that has to be said by me as a writer about music, so much of my life I had arguments in silence with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, and now I'm out here not talking about it. What's wrong with me? Time to turn that boat around.

I am bound to follow up on the discussion of the music that made me, the albums that I obsessed over in my youth. There's just stuff that has to be said by me as a writer about music, so much of my life I had arguments in silence with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, and now I'm out here not talking about it. What's wrong with me? Time to turn that boat around.

We start at the top with The Last Poets - This is Madness. Along with Moms Mabley, this is an album I found in Pops collection that I probably wasn't supposed to find because it was filled with cursing. It must have been one of those long summer days when I was bored to death and started poking around in the bookshelves, and I come across this album with a bright interior. And the words! The words just leapt of the page searing my consciousness - I never saw them written down before. Imagine the nerve of such people, talking about revolution and here it all was. Now my father liked Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, The Four Freshmen and Nancy Wilson. Now that I think of it, I can probably recall a great number of his favorite records, including the transparent red vinyl of Peter and the Wolf he got for me. But seeing this in the bunch was too much. Of course I memorized the killer track Mean Machine and still remember snippets like 'automatic pushbutton remote control, synthetic genetics command your soul'. It was difficult for me to understand how this record could exist - it was pure uncut revolution on wax - who turned the other way at the record factory? And look at those black Africans on the cover. They were beautiful and powerful with big afros and fire. It was the coolest, most subversive, thrilling thing that could be. Just listening to it gave me thrills. I don't know if I ever let my father know that I knew that he had this album. It was that powerful.

All N All- Earth, Wind and Fire. I found All N All on the downstroke. The album had been out for years, I'm sure, before I actually purchased it. In fact, I lived a relatively impoverished life with music. It wasn't until I was around 19 with my first real fulltime job that I was anything more than a slave to the radio and the tape deck. I remember the cassette I owned with a piece of 'Be Ever Wonderful' that cut off suddenly and began to play backwards. I fell in love with half a song and played it for years not knowing the rest since it had fallen out of radio rotation. So when I finally got the album it captured me completely. One night at USC as a tender frosh, I got to dance the perfect slow dance to 'Would You Mind'. Ahh where did you go? How many hours have I spend staring at the artwork of this album? But the great personal triumph and impression was 'Runnin'. This was a completely new discovery, the kind of jazz I was just beginning to appreciate. I don't know what the term is for that transition they did with the horns and voices in the middle of the song, but it blew me away. Runnin' is probably the first song I knew that made me comfortable with multiple tempos in a single performance. If you don't understand me, it's your fault.

Dirty Mind - Prince. When Prince's first album 'For You' came out, I wanted to be Prince. When Prince's second album came out, I didn't want to be Prince any more, but I could see maybe how I might try something as crazy as riding naked on a horse. When Prince's third album Dirty Mind came out, I just stood there with my mouth open. See, I could handle the blistering guitar and screaming of Bambi. It was way cool to be into that - it was pushing the envelope. But Dirty Mind didn't only rip up the envelope, it burned down the post office. Yes, 1999 was a much richer and more rewarding album, and Controversy lived up to its name. But Dirty Mind was the album that had a much bigger impact. To say that you were a fan of Prince before he became the huge success that he was by Controversy was to take a serious risk. I took the risk.

Majesty of the Blues - Wynton Marsalis. Wynton came along right at the perfect time. As soon as I read up on him, I purchased Think of One. We were born in the same year and he spoke directly to that part of me that was respectful and arrogant at the same time. I dug him on that album, played it to death and then even more with Black Codes from the Underground. And then with Herbie Hancock's Quartet my favorite jazz ballad for a long time would become 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' featuring a melancholy Wynton that betrayed something I hadn't heard before. JMood, years later broke through but it wasn't until Majesty of the Blues that he connected with me on a gutbucket level. The astounding Death of Jazz just brought me low. I determined that this was going to be the song they played at my funeral. And then with Premature Autopsies, I had words that connected me emotionally to all the things that jazz and the black soul in America symbolized. It was an album which was a soundtrack to my pathos, and it put me on a road to a more robust feeling of something ancient flowing in my blood.

Tutu - Miles Davis. Nobody wants to say so, but Tutu is the greatest hiphop album ever recorded. It wrecked jazz for good by bankrolling Kenny G, 94.7 The Wave and every jazz artist desperate to escape for bebop. It may not seem like it but it's true - just nobody wants to say so. Miles went the length whereas with Youre Under Arrest, he was just playing. But in Tutu is a reinvention that showed everyone that the masters can work with the sixteen beat and that Herbie wasn't just out there freaked out. The nerve of Miles to do a Scritti Politti tune just completely solidified everything I had been out in the wilderness saying back in the days when I wanted to scratch Hey 19 and put some meaty beats under a jazz arrangement. I got a chance to see Miles around that time down in San Juan Capistrano. It was phenomenal.

Carmel - Joe Sample. There were three distinct moments in my life when I decided to really understand jazz. The very first time was when I was about 19, and I must have asked around, because my first album was Joe Sample's Carmel. This was one of those albums I always liked playing end to end rather than picking a track and then lifting the needle again. It always put me in a good mood to listen to Joe Sample whereas other jazz I listened to at the time (not much) tried to prove its cool. I listened to Billy Cobham, Seawind and Tom Scott, and of course there was Spyro Gyra's Morning Dance and Hiroshima. But Joe Sample was the coolest of them all.

Even looking at the cover mellowed me out and reminded me of the peaceful camping trips I had taken up in Big Sur - a romance with that area of California I have never shaken.

Modern Man - Stanley Clarke. Not long after I took in Joe Sample, I ran into a cat named Ronald Stephens. He knew things about music that put me to shame, especially on the jazz side. And I wondered how anybody who had any hair growing out of them could possibly be excited by the mellowness of jazz. He looked at me and said, you obviously don't know Stanley Clarke or Jeff Beck do you? Who? He said Stanley Clarke is the greatest bass guitar player on the planet. I'm like, you can't be serious - don't you know about Louis Johnson? He yawns. He says, I play bass guitar and I can play every Brother's Johnson song, but I can't even come close to that. This I got to hear. It turns out that right around the way in the high end stereo department, the guy with a rack of Soundcraftsmens and the biggest speakers that JBL makes is cranking up Rock & Roll Jelly and Closing Statement. So now I've heard it, and I realize that I will never be the same. People are asking me if I've never heard of Stanley Clarke - I see the School Days album and realize that I have heard him before, but only in that odd way. If you've ever hung out with record store geeks, something we all used to do but never do any longer, then you know what it's like to be in the store when they play something that only the guys behind the counter can get into, and people in the store are like... you took off the Commodores to play this? There used to be a record store between Rocket Cleaners and Boys Market on Crenshaw in the hood, and I can still remember the day they did that for what was then Stanley Clarke's newest album, School Days. I stayed to listen to the whole thing, liked Desert Song, walked out and forgot all about it. What I really wanted to hear was 'Running Away' by Roy Ayers - that was about as jazzy as my teenaged sensibilities allowed me to be. It had to be funky. Still Stanley Clarke was a great revelation to me and expanded my musical world with themes that I still find fascinating.

Sequencer - Synergy. If it's not obvious to you, then here's a clue about me. Ever since Space Race by Billy Preston, I have been absolutely addicted to electronic music. In high school, I thought that the world's greatest musician was Walter Orange. That had something to do with some confusion on my part, because I saw a picture of him and we bore each other some resemblance. What I recalled was that there was a man seated in the middle of five keyboards and Moog electronics. Every funk band that used synthesizers became associated with Orange in my young mind, and he was me. That association stayed in my mind until George Duke broke through with Reach For It, and then was completely obliterated by Larry Fast and W. Carlos. Still, I didn't own any of that music until I was 19, and on the same Soundcraftsmen / JBL setup at Fedco La Cienega's Coastron concession was the introduction of several new albums that fundamentally rearranged my musical tastes. One was the Alan Parsons Project - specifically Pyramid. The second was Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire III. I dug the big Doobie Brothers album that was hot that year and Supertramp's Logical Song was often on my mind. For the first time, I really listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon - the problem being that anytime I inquired into the matter, people who knew looked at me like I was crazy. So, not willing to pay up for the super duper quality remastered version, I could only get a little piece of that music at a time up until that point. The second biggest favorite of that time period would have to be the debut album by the Yellow Magic Orchestra, which did the right things with electronic music that was perfectly original and not part of a disco tune. Still, the granddady of them all was Larry Fast's Synergy. At times when I get nostalgic, like right now, I think of how I used to daydream over the sci-fi illustrations of an artist whose name I need to recover to the strains of the New World Synphony. This remains one of the albums of which I never tire, and that period of music was signature in my life.

Duck Rock - Malcolm McLaren. Duck Rock was for me very likely the thing it was for everyone else. A glimpse into the future, the success of a shotgun method without any rhyme or reason that nonetheless struck more than a chord but established an orchestra hit. I have only now discovered the fact that my other idols, The Art of Noise, collaborated on this LP. But in fact it was Hobo Scratch, the 12 inch remix that just wore out the needles on my turntables.

Go ahead, say it. We're on a world tour with Mr. Malcolm McLaren. We're goin each and every place including Spain, Asia, Africa, Tokyo, Mexico. A hiphop bite that's been bitten all over for decades.

You've got half the aesthetic that would dominate for the next decade in the album cover with Keith Haring and the iconic ghetto blaster, and the hard beats with scratches and electronics and signature voices, accents never heard, outtakes. Insane. Brilliant. Addictive.

Daft - The Art of Noise. AON became for me something of an obsession. Beyond the crystalline beauty of the synthesized note put to funky use by the brilliant Thomas Dolby whose Blinded Me With Science, like no other song beside Morris Day's Tricky, put me into uncontrollable break dance spasms it was Close (To Ehe Edit) that was the song that gets the Michael Bowen Lifetime Achievement as the 'Something about the music gets into my pants award'. And what's even more crazy is that Beat Box was on the same album. Astounding! I would have to say that without question {Rockit, Beat Box, Close, Tricky} are the all time greatest break dancing songs ever. The answer to your question is yes, I could break. I never managed a head spin or the signature windmill or flare. I would have needed a crew to practice with, something I wouldn't find on campus. I satisfied myself that I was the best breaker at State and famously won the campus Nerd Contest for breakdancing with taped glasses, flood pants and a pocket protector. Props must go to Charles Walker however, I did have red black and green pens in that pocket. As well I spun on my back after winning a scholarship at an awards ceremony dance. Of course I dug Scritti Politti, ABC and Yes' Owner of a Lonely Heart was a smash, but the Art of Noise was king and remained champion. There was something of an underground art to them and ZTT; I loved that they were texty. It was from them I expected codes from the underground.

Windham Hill Sampler 84. What happened during the 80s was a burst of creativity in the popular culture of the sort we're likely to see after we get out of the current depression, and in that time was the creation of Silicon Valley as a cultural as well as an industrial center. Windham Hill was a big part of that movement and I felt very much a part of that. The haunting beauty that was David Bowie's This is Not America was the the other end of the electronic spectrum from the jarring bombast of the Art of Noise. There was of course Moments in Love in its various incantations, but that was not enough. There had to be an entire ocean of mellow, and that's where Windham Hill shined. With its minimalist approach, it was pristine and crisp. It was logical and soothing.

Mark Isham's On the Threshold of Liberty was an anthem that struck stirring noble emotions in direct counterpoint to the lament of Bowie. And while Andreas Wollenweider ended up getting on my nerves, and Jean Luc Ponty always seemed to be too busy, there was balance and a lack of pretense in the Windham Hill artists. All except for Liz Story whom I found to be a great disappointment. For many years I had a solo piano search.. well that's another long story. In the end, I must say that I never did find that solo pianist who did New Age properly for me, but I have been spoiled by Herbie, Chick, Andre, Martha, Vladimir and Glenn.

Crossroads - Tracy Chapman. I fell in and out of love around this album with the woman I would eventually marry. And for her there are a number of albums that resonate with romance and affection from that same time in my life. Those would include UB40, Basia, Clifford Brown (with Strings) and most notably the Stanley Clarke project Animal Logic. Lyrics! Not since Stevie and EWF have we had music that speaks to the soul. Again, there is a kind of purity and simple beauty in this that I found inspiring. It helped that the very idea of a black woman of unconventional beauty in dreads who spoke of unplugged revolution was automatically appealing to me back in the late 80s, but we all knew talent when we saw it.

Crossroads was her second album and although my favorite of all her songs continues to be 'I Used To Be a Sailor', this collection hangs together as the center of gravity of Chapman. The sweet sadness of A Hundred Years, the defiance of Born to Fight, the smug condescension of Material World, the heartfelt and plaintive This Time. It's an album for the ages.

Keep On Movin' - Soul II Soul. For me as I believe with many millions of others, this was the watershed album that helped initiate that international level of cool I called New World Afrika. It was one of the first acknowledgements of a global set by my generation. You knew that EWF travelled around the world, but they never brought anyone back with them. Jazzy B had the voice, the look, the sound and the humanistic vibe that took everybody by surprise. What's funny is that I remember that he came out at the very same time as Al B Sure! when all that New Jack Swing was still trying to be cooler than it possibly could be. I remember just feeling sorry for hiphop at the time when Special Ed was still on the charts as well as Kwame (whom I thought was the coolest and most avant guard in the days before De La Soul) and ESD. When Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis could still make or break people as if all of urban contemporary was closely held as if prisoner of a New Jack City redoubt, in sails Soul II Soul like an irresistible force and blows them all away. When sophisticates like myself and my buppie crew were just getting fed up with the frenetic energy of Rob Base and the Beastie Boys (not to mention Milk is Chillin'), the smooth vocals and pounding beat of Soul II Soul was the perfect respite in between them and the super smooth of Double Vision. No not Foreigner, James and Sanborn. Speaking of which, there are other albums that really locked me in during the years between 86 and 90 and I'm going to do a special on them because in that spot was some great happenings, and music was one fourth of my focus. More on that later. As for Soul II Soul, they picked the exact right shade of brown, something that wouldn't be repeated until Janet.

Fishbone - Fishbone. Now I'm going to take a step backward in time to Fishbone. I happen to believe that Fishbone was one of the greatest rock bands on the planet. And it is certainly the most underrated bands ever. This was their debut and it changed the world. For all the music in the world I grew up with, all of it was cool. Cool is not enough and sometimes you just need to be weird. For weird there was Parliament. But even that was not enough. Fishbone was frenetic. They represented the energy of the moment, and it wasn't until I knew the music, smart, fresh, funky, rocking, ska-rythmic and loud that I could express that energy of mine. It turns out that these were neighbors. Some of the band members went to middle school with my younger brother, and I can distinctly remember when I used to hang out with Angelo during that brief period in my life when I was not above disco roller skating and pop locking in the streets of Hollywood. Fishbone was on the edge, and if I didn't spend my entire life trying to be respectable I would be exactly like them, and it is that dynamic that lead me to the mosh pit at the Santa Monica Civic for the first concert of the Black Rock Coalition, in shirt, tie and jacket. I have been lucky enough to have found a woman who actually understands Fishbone. I wish I knew her then!

Hallucination Engine - Material. This album remains my absolute favorite of all. It is finally, after many years of searching, exactly my kind of music. There is the purity of ambient synthesizers, there is the sophistication of polyrhthmic beats. There is big boom of bass, the improvisation of bebop, the integration of Eastern themes. All that and Arabic lyricism as well. I have been following two threads of this kind of music since the 80s. One of them culminated in the music around Adrian Sherwood and OnU and the other around Bill Laswell and Axiom. In the end, Laswell was the champion and his music explores all the dimensions of sound I find fascinating, compelling and majestic. His collaborations with everyone from Sly and Robbie and Peter Namlook to his recreations of Bob Marley and Miles Davis are stunning. But in my opinion, his greatest work to date can be found on this album. It is track number seven, entitled The Hidden Garden / Naima. Yes, that Naima. It is, in my opinion, better than Coltrane's original. This is the music I have played in rented cars through the streets of Brooklyn and Tampa and Houston with the windows rolled down, just trying to show how that big boom can carry so much sophistication and flavor. This is the music that carries the literal wit of William S. Burroughs about deals with the devil.

The odd thing is with this album is like so many others, I don't associate a name with the songs. I just know them. They occupy a nameless place in memory because there is no communicating them. It's like a secret knowledge, a fountain of inspiration that you try to share but the water slips through your hands as you attempt to remove it from the source. I can say 'Laswell' to a few that know him and then what? There's this, of course, but there is also the perfect Dub Chamber 3. There's also the extraordinary Panthalassa. I know a man named Benzon who once looked after my son. If there's a man who knows my mind perhaps he is the one. In music he understands the power it transduces through the brain. I look at him with library envy and wish I could explain. I'll tell him Laswell and he'll nod, then pick up his horn and play a stretch and hang on to a note mystical and forlorn. And I'll say yes after a moment and say how did you know. He'll shrug and ask me don't we all who listen for the flow? And I forget this epic trance was dreamed in God's own mind, as I just wrangle syllables interpolated for the purposes of explicating that which transpired without any sense of time as if binded to the blind.

October 06, 2010

Perverse modernism is the strain in modern art that will do anything to get a rise out of the public. It's not the sum total of modernism, by any means. Rather it's the easy part. Millions of people who cannot grasp the formal innovations of Picasso or Parker have no trouble grasping "art" that rejects tradition, attacks standards, blurs the line between high and low, and (most important) uses shock and offense to attract attention and boost sales. These tactics are often classified as "post-modern," but in fact they've been present since the dawn of modernism. A century ago, certain avant-garde artists in Europe believed that if they made the right anarchic gesture in the right setting, it would spark social and political revolution. No one believes this any more - indeed, there is a vacuum at the heart of today's perverse modernism, where the old dream of revolution once stood. But the bold outrageous gesture is still thought the essence of "creativity" by many people who can know better (artists and pundits) and many who cannot (teenagers).

October 05, 2010

Since life is not fair and one cannot become un-famous, unless I suppose one is a victim of a Communist purge, Claire Berlinski will likely live in the shadows of Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter for the foreseeable future. That is, for the public mind. For me however, I have just been astonished to find her - another of the insightful writers at the Manhattan Institute.

She is genuinely of polymathic interest, one of the sorts of individuals I'm sure Gerard Vanderluen had in mind when he took it upon himself to found the Right Network, that thing coming to fruition that appeals to the Right American on more than just a urgent level. Nobody whose company I particularly enjoy is a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh, and for a certain uninitiated segment of the Polloi, there are perhaps six poles of conservative thought, three of whom I've already mentioned, the other three being Beck, Palin and Bush. But they forget the think tanks and serious policy wonks, and those that remember tend to forget that my favorite is Manhattan.

Well, now we add Berlinski. And she writes spy novels too!

So here, I reiterate the great gaping hole in Left thought that leaves them oblivious to the brain-dead obvious reason for my abandonment of Progressivism. Stalin. But I know the name doesn't quite resonate and more than a few Americans are guilty of oblivion. Berlinski sees deeper into this dilemma.

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.

I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to get Google Alerts to find much, though I want to set it up to poke me when 'Pavel Stroilov' crosses its radar. It seems to me that it would be a no-brainer to get the right grant money to have this stuff translated if only for the probability that Condi will get her hands on it and add insight.

Martin Amis, it is rumored, is likely to ditch England to live over here in the States, and so we can expect him to do something altogether proper to alert us to what we've forgotten. One might hope that he can become our equivalent of Rudyard Kipling and bring the message of the appropriate Empire back into our conciousness.

In the meantime, Berlinski gets it in dimensions and flavors that awaken the senses without being so dour and sarcastic as the still funny Mark Steyn. As you can see, I like the literate sophisticates to illustrate the bad ideas against which we properly rail. Welcome Claire.

I have been a union member, a Teamster in fact. My first full-time job was at a union shop, Local 232, now defunct. 90 days probation and you may or may not have a job. On day 91 the union either invited you in or you had to leave the premesis. You then would get a nice raise, start paying union dues and get your union card. The tatoo was optional.

So having been a union member, I reserve the right to be emotional and illogical about unions. My first gut is about some guy who is trying to eliminate Right To Work laws from 22-odd states that now have them. Right to Work is the soundbite meaning that sometime 60 years ago or so, closed shops were eliminated. Also certain states, not including California became 'Right to Work' states meaning that they could break the 90 day stranglehold. So the difference is essentially this. An open shop would be a place where union workers could work side by side with non-union members and conceivably have the same job but maybe get paid different rates. The union job would have the advantage of the union strongarming the wage during collective bargaining. The non-union job would have the advantage of the management deciding exactly what the employee does and when and for how much. Essentially collective bargaining freezes a job duties, wages and everything else.

A Right to Work state says you can have an open shop and the union cannot force the non-union guy to pay dues or join. This sets up a condition in which people with equal skills can be paid differently etc.

Here's the thing. I'm a consultant. Consultants are the guys who work for little specialty firms that can do one or two things better than anyone. That means we go into your company and do Job X for way more than either a union or non-union regular employee. This happens all the time. It's outsourcing. Outsourcing is exactly like making union jobs into non-union jobs, except outsourced jobs usually pay *more*. Then there are offshored jobs. They are both outsourced and moved to another country. Same thing except they pay way *less*.

So essentially, the union/non-union duopoly has been broken up two other ways. Employers have more options of what kind of employees they want to hire, for what periods of time and under what conditions. On the other hand, they have a bit less control over the spirit and motivation of those employees - their management ability and leadership ability goes down. People are loyal to who? Interesting dynamic huh? So the advantage goes to the company no matter which way you slice it.

I always tend to think of organized labor as an inefficiency, and collective bargaining as something making up for an employee deficiency. But there are businesses like that - where you're not going to get creative, inspirational management, or well-motivated workers. So unions are where they are for good reasons. The problem is not the existence of the union itself, rather the effect a union's presence has on the whole of an industry once it becomes entrenched. I can think of few things worse than the stultification that unions create in an industry that needs innovation. So I argue against union monopoly.

I'm not convinced that Right To Work is adequately effective against union monopoly, but to the extent that it does give the company a way to hire on its own terms, it can be much better for an industry in need of dynamism. Unfortunately, I don't know that there is much capital likely to go into such industries. What it takes to start an alternative to the public education system in order to get around the teacher's union is almost impossible to achieve. Right to Work injected into the LA Unified School District would be great. But that would require a political revolution.

The 90s was the decade of the African American. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Puff Daddy, Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Janet Jackson. This is the decade in which African Americans came top with style, with class, and power in reserve. Men and women began wearing dreads and braids like never before. Reggae music became more popular than ever, and black models like Tyson and Tyra changed the look of high fashion. Where there was once only the Cosby Show, now whole networks seemed dominated by black sitcoms. At the beginning of the 90s nobody believed hiphop would move beyond gangsta rap, by the end of the 90s BMW commercials had hiphop soundtracks. African Americans pushed the multicultural agenda, migrated back to the South, recreating it, integrated the mainstream like never before, closed economic and educational gaps and triumphed on the domestic and world stage.

The 90s was the decade of the Republican. Bill Clinton moved the entire Democratic Party to the right, why? Liberals were toast. We had Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, Term Limits, Tax Abatement, Welfare Spending reductions and the rise of governors playing at presidential politics. Rudy and Rush redefined the public sphere. People forgot Mario Cuomo existed.

The 90s was the decade of the tribe. Decentralization became the standard and American culture made peace with its multiple personalities. When I think of the look of the 90s, I see Janet Jackson's album. The 90s are orangeish brown. It is dark red with stainless steel highlights. Think Urban Outfitters. Think Houston's restaurant. I see Djimon Hounsou and all fashionable black men with shaved heads. Clothes have become baggier, casual Fridays an institution. Facial hair is a lot more prevalent, but not quite like the 70s. If the 70s was plastic and neon, and the 80s steel and glass, the 90s was cherry wood and platinum. It was the decade where people named their kids Jason and Connor. It was the decade of the Alternative Mainstream, when everything that split off didn't die but survived on its own, where people felt more comfortable in their niches and niches became more acceptable to everyone. Cable battered the networks. McMansion 'communities' shrank the size of the new suburbs. Show what tribe you belong to, what's your tatoo? What's your gender? What's your preference? What's your ethnicity?

The 90s was the extreme decade. Once the 'Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics' sticker became almost de reguer on half of pop and rock. Rock music came back in the 90s and finally made it's accomodation with hiphop. Rock and hiphop have merged and the best is still yet to come, but radio for youth is all of a piece. Baggy pants are what you wear, period. The X Games became an institution and Sprite and Mountain Dew duked it out. Ultramarathons, Eco Challenges, Iron Man Triathalons, Snowboarding, Bungee Jumping, Wakeboarding, Street Luge, Mountain Biking, new forms of skydiving, Base jumping all reached peak levels. It got to the point where even James Bond couldn't do anything to surprise us.

90s was the decade of computer. Computers and software finally lived up to their potential. All of the ideas that had been germinating in universities and thinktanks catually came to fruition in the 90s. In the 90s, everyone finally got a cell phone, a home computer, an email address and voice mail. Now it is the exception that you have a little machine with tapes at your office from which to get your messages. In the beginning of the 90s, having a fax was a big deal. At the end of the 90s, people talk about email attachements. The 90s was the last decade for the videogame arcade. It went from the fringes of society into nonexistence. As was predicted, cocooning happened in the 90s, and something dramatic in home technolgy. Suddenly, people began spending more money on Video than on Audio. DVDs really exploded and The Matrix was the killer app. The number of people who don't have at least two stereo speakers in their television has probably dropped down to zero. There are no more dial phones anywhere. Cordless phones in the home are the norm rather than the exception - the very sight of a woman in a kitchen untangling a long phone cord is anachronistic. In the 90s, computer generated graphics signalled the very end of cheesy special effects. Jurassic Park was the beginning of a long string of films, including the reawakend Star Wars series that proved movies could once again be magical.

The 90s was the decade that introduced us to the Big Box. Walmart emerged as the king of the outdoor 'destination' mall, but other big winners were Home Depot, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond and Staples all of whom didn't exist or were tiny and unheard of in the 80s. We changed our way of shopping. Mongomery Wards died. Woolworth died. K-Mart wheezed on its death bed. Costco proved that for lower prices, people will abandon cushy department stores and spend half a day consuming mass quantities. We started going to Smart & Final instead of Pavillions. We shoved these mass quantities into the back of our huge minivans and SUVs. Shopping was not about browsing in a mall, but pushing huge cart in a warehouse-looking store, after having checked the internet for the lowest prices. We didn't need any floor staff to help us, except to get that box down from the 20 foot high shelf.

The 90s was the decade of the 'investor class'. The new upper middle class went beyond just talking about. In the 80s we could all joke about yuppies, their BMWs and their cell phones. In the 90s they moved away and wound up in half million dollar homes and suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore. They were for real. There were probably more new models of Mercedes-Benz introduced in the 90s than ever before. The E Class, The C Class and the S Class began to be seen everywhere.

The 90s was a decade of domestic terrorism and ever more gruesome crime. The LA Riots were not just in LA but in every major city. The OJ Simpson trial, the Unabomber, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, Centennial Park Bombing, Polly Klaus, Heidi Fleiss. While most Americans felt safer and violent crime was generally held down, the crimes we paid attention to became ever more bizarre. Our fascination with crime also became bizarre as expressed in our interest for movies like 'Silence of the Lambs', 'Seven', and 'Natural Born Killers'. Television shows like 'NYPD Blue' and 'Cops' satisfied this appetite for extreme crime.

All in all, the prosperity and innovation of the 90s made it a very powerful time. The 80s were extreme in their own way, but they only seemed to be the chaos and accelleration that prepared us for what was to come. The 90s proved that even greater robustness was possible, that America could swing with extremes and even when the center didn't hold, the margins could stand on their own. What do you think?

In an odd kind of confluence of events, one that probably registers in about 12 brains in this whole damned planet, I noticed that there is a guy being sued for misrepresenting himself as an attorney for CAIR. His name is Morris Days.

Morris Dees is the guy who bankrupted the KKK. Morris Day is cooler than Santa Claus baby!

I'm one of those guys who wanted Morris Day to become a much bigger superstar than he did become. His attitude was my attitude, at least back in '82 when I was a freshman at State wondering how I could get into one of those camisole parties thrown by Phi Beta Sigma. In fact, I did go to one of those camisole parties and it was a bit too off the hook for me. But it was pleasing for me to discover that such things actually did take place.

Morris Day is one of those talented individuals who has a website that's five years old still with 'coming soon' parts. There's nothing quite so sad - except knowing in the same breath that he used to represent your social world. Andy Rooney remarked that he didn't even realize who Kurt Cobain was. Cobain had the advantage, like Princess Di, of dying young. Right about now it would be even sadder to see what they would have eventually turned out to be in their fifties. And so it must be with Morris now that he's not, what he wanted to be, Donald Trump Black Version.

When that song came out, back when Morris was a big star, as silly as it sounds, that was quite a miraculous thing to think about. Back in those days, Barry Gordy who owned half of the black slaves entertainers in Hollywood was saying to hell with MTV and music videos - that it was a trend and black people wouldn't respond to flashy videos. Well, except for Stevie. If Stevie wanted a video then it was OK. But the idea that black and white audiences would go for videos of black artists and that such a thing would sell records and concerts.. well there was an industry consensus that this was something neither black artists nor audiences could afford. Morris Day was bodacious enough to record Ice Cream Castles and break through lots of frozen mentalities about race. But he was just that kind of off the wall dude, managing to be classy and subversive at the same time.

Day should have been rich. He held a grip on my generation which was as substantive as Jay-Z ever had on his. I don't know how many parties have been had based on ideas in Jay-Z records, but I have a feeling that Hova just bought the whole girls and their camisoles, whereas Morris, Jerome and The Kid used wit and candor. Day seduced, all the rest of the rappers bullied women into submission. And, as quite as it's kept, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone else who moved the party scene with such finesse and intelligence after the end of Day's salad days. They all became sweaty crooners like Keith Sweat, Orange Juice Jones or Al B Sure, or just little cut-up nasty rudeboys like Jodeci and all the clones around Johnny Gill. Now I'm not really going to say anything bad about Boyz II Men, except that - well they only could rock the party with one song MotownPhilly. After Morris Day fell off, the R&B Party did not come back until Missy Elliott. OK? Yeah there was a little New Jack Swing, but it didn't really last more than two years. Admit it.

Now what I have to admit is that Morris Day kicked the majority of ass for four years around my collegiate days, when time moved slow. So they will always be outsized in my mind, especially for that particular time in my life when I used to rent KITT looking Firebirds and cruised down to San Diego State to front on the locals. And yeah actually Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam rocked the party even harder. BUT. Morris Day and the Time were the last huge R&B party band of all time. And yes they crossed over. I'm trying to think of another band since that has actually got people dancing a new dance with a song about the dance. Not Missy Elliott. She saved it, I've already acknowledged that. Crunk all you want, but what kind of audacity you had to have to make a song about an Oak Tree and make it a dance? That's energy.

The Walk, The Bird, The Oak Tree. The brilliant percussion of 777-9311. That's stuff with sweetness and light that just doesn't happen any more. And it's too bad. Morris Day couldn't blow, and he didn't try. He couldn't rap, but the boy could talk, and he talked in his records improvising at a moderate clip that made all of the 'owws' and 'aawws' of the previous Funk era instantly tired.

The classic in all of this - of Morris Day at the absolute quintessence of game was a single called Tricky. It was a stripped down version of the beats to Prince's Irresistable Bitch, and you have to ask which was the chicken and which was the egg. There was also Cloreen Bacon Skin that almost worked on Prince's Crystal Ball, but it was an extended variation on the theme that was only good enough to be mixed into a good DJ's rep. Speaking of which... that's what killed The Time. It was the beat. Once DJs had the beat at their disposal, nobody needed a band. And without a band, there was no need for a front man. Goodnight Morris.

What we will never know is how the band exactly disintegrated and what must keep certain people awake nights thinking about how they might have been Jimmy Jam or Terry Lewis. They survived the death of the R&B band in the late 80s. The whole thing became a producer's game - and that became clear by the time we had Rob Bass and the Beasties. Jam & Lewis got Janet and the rest is history.

But I still think of Morris Day as the last of his kind. That reminds me. I'm going to buy Pandemonium.

October 04, 2010

For the second or third time in a week, I have heard jokes about Belgium. The best version of the joke is that there are only two things that come from Belgium, chocolate and child molesters. And they only make the chocolate to entice the children. I cannot find how long this joke has been funny because I cannot find through my buddy Google exactly when child molestation became a public problem in Belgium. Nor can I determine whether or not it is strictly something associated with the Catholic Church or with something else. I imagine there's a good history of Belgium somewhere other than Wikipedia, but I'm not that interested.

What strikes me about Belgium is how tiny it is and how vulnerable it might be despite the fact that it is the nominal capital of Europe. Or is that The Hague? Maybe I'm thinking of Van Rompuy as President of the EU being from Belgium. If you put the Netherlands and Belgium together, you get something about 2/3rds as populous as California in about 1/7th the land area. So it's a smaller mistake than Northern California vs Southern California. In fact, you can put Israel into that mix as well and the three of them combined still don't add up population-wise.

I think of Israel because, well, it's tiny too. And given that Belgium is a kingdom and so is Holland you wonder what keeps them around. Guess what? It's the money. Belgian GDP is 468B and Holland's is 807B. Israel is 200B that adds up to just short of 1.5T. California is 1.85T. So if you have a decent enough GDP, and population, then perhaps you can stick around despite your constrained space. It explains a bit.

But Belgium also notoriously has little national spirit. That certainly cannot be said of Israel. In Belgium, they literally split the country in two for French speakers and Dutch speakers, or Flemish which kind of sounds like a combination of German and Afrikaans spoked with an almost dead flat American English accent. I noticed this a couple weekends ago when my daughter was filming an infomercial for her history class about immigration to NY and NJ - they wanted to know what Dutch accented English sounds like. Neil Farage of course had his notorious barrage against the Belgian state, and I remember some of the Brits I made pals with on my trip to the Midlands saying rather tedious things about the Belgians themselves. The word most commonly used was 'morose'.

So will Belgium survive? How does Belgium survive? I mean its population is smaller than the net number of Mexican Illegals here in the States. At some point we should care, but exactly how much is difficult to say. I think that the safest thing to say is that Belgium can purchase its survival in a steady Europe where state on state conflict is considered passe, but that nobody trembles in fear of the Belgian Army, even if it could manage joint operations between its two linguistic partitions. It is in thinking about the linguistic partitions of Belgium that questions about European union should be considered. If Belgium itself can work, then perhaps that is part of the spirit that animates hope about the European economic and political union. But I can tell you for damned sure that political union across cultural lines is NOT working in Holland.

Holland aka the Netherlands is one and a half times larger in population than Belgium, and that is the place which is dealing with a troublesome matter of Islamic integration. To keep it short and simple, it ain't working - c.f. Hirsi Ali and the murder of Theo Van Gogh. So if the Netherlands and Belgium are Balkanized, it doesn't bode well.

Consider Spain for a moment. Nobody thinks that they would do well if this global recession continues, and they're at 1.4 Trillion in GDP. That's more than three times Belgium. And Spain, also a kingdom, has 46 million people. You would think that they're more likely to survive than Belgium - after all Spanish and Catalan mix better than Dutch and French. It is all about the people.

All of this is speculation of course. Belgium might have a financial system that is an order of magnitude more fiscally sound than that of other troubled EU nations, and indeed there may be an extended time of peace in which assets alone can and will buy security. If you're Belgium, you have to bet your life on it. As far as my thinking goes were I Belgian, I'd do everything possible to get in the EU umbrella and figure out some kind of Federated approach that can corral and manage economic, cultural and linguistic diversity.

But the jokes continue. Who really cares about Belgium? Can a tiny Eruopean kingdom survive Islamism?

I didn't expect to like this movie as much as I did. But it was a fine cops & robbers movie. Unstupid.

There's something I like about this film, now that I've had a moment to let it sink in, and that thing is how well it makes a Boston film - in that the environment is part of the plot. This is Affleck's second or third notable Boston film and I'm going to bring up a comparison that I think is perfectly apt. And that is Marlon Brando.

I was too young to understand anything significant about Marlon Brando, and I must confess that I'm not in a great position to judge. Streetcar and Waterfront sit idling on my Netflix queue and I have never quite been so bored that I actually desired to sit through them. But I did just watch about 30 minutes of YouTubery, including the interview of him with Dick Cavette shortly after he made his notorious Oscar speech. Brando looked exactly like what I imagine most of some fraction of America wanted a man to look like at the time. With the beard and long hair, he was a large square man with a large square face, uniquely handsome, very self-possesed, and weary. Cavette admitted that he had a previous four hour conversation with Brando, and evidently everything had been said, and Brando must have convinced Cavette of something quite profound - or perhaps intimidated him in the way men of action do when they are revealed to be as contemplative and intelligent as their effete counterparts. Whatever the reason, Brando was bored, Cavette was tiptoeing and the whole affair looked like an in-joke, as if there were something extraordinarily scary that the world was afraid might leap from the mouth of this screen idol.

So what was that thing? I don't know. Something about how much it hurts for certain people to be portrayed in certain demeaning ways. Oh yes, I recall. It was the 'positive images' argument. Perhaps Brando was the man who first articulated it in a way that Hollywood ultimately had to reckon with. He mentioned how much Hollywood had changed its portrayal of blacks, but how Natives and others still suffered a preponderance of belittling roles. There will alwasy be something about this argument that fails to impress me. It is the inherent contradiction established by the role of entertainment in extablishing a counter-punching stereotype. I mean really. Who wants to be Sidney Poitier now?

Guys and Dolls was the only flick that I saw in which Brando's acting talent impressed me. I had no idea who he was when I saw it, and found him remarkable and unique. But on the whole, I like Gene Kelly better in all of that millieu.

I watched some fragment of a film in which Brando did a number of minutes saying nothing and completely rocking the world of a soda-jerk diner waitress. It must have been the first time this deal was done on film because I've seen it replicated numerous times since. This must have been the impact of The Method on what passed for deeply philosophical thought about the art and science of the film industry at the time. Filling the screen with no words and communicating through movement - a kind of ballet. OK I'll buy that for a dollar. The problem for me is that the context needs to be spot on, or it has to be a classic tale. Otherwise it is much less than what it appears to be. An old couple walks down the sidewalk complaining about kids today, motorcycle guy takes it all in, walks into the diner and orders two malts. Big whoop.

Affleck does one big close-up in which the twitches of his eyebrows makes the perfect emphasis on his self-revelation to the woman inches from him in the public gardens. It extends appropriately long for today's ego and serves the purpose of his coming clean to the woman he wants. But it is the only bit of overacting (which is not actually overacted) in the entire film. For once, The Town doesn't go there, deep inside the motivations of what drives a man to be a bank robber. He's just a bad dude from a bad part of town hanging with an unsilent but deadly crew. They don't play badasses, they just don't have a problem doing very particularly engineered dirty deeds.

The film is made by the friendship between Affleck and his stunningly cast partner. And the scene that takes us there is begun by a particularly cruel bit of chivalry. Some chavs have insulted Affleck's girl-to-be. She identifies them, he and his partner show up at their door and mash them but good. It is one of those film moments that can't actually be spoiled despite the fact that I won't try.

As a cops and robbers film, the plot is held together well without going as deeply into the heads of either cops or robbers. It is very much like one of my all-time favorites 'Heat' but does that one better by leaving me a bit more emotionally neutral. I don't like dramas that are not tragic, and so I don't want to be led down the path of empathy with characters who are essentially sociopathic. That path is the subtext of much of the successful entertainment issuing from Hollywood these past decade (basically since Tony Soprano).

I like action films for the action and this one delivers without going over the top, without too much personal drama and by putting in the right amount of dialog. It doesn't monologue you through plots and explanations, it doesn't apply ridiculous stunts, it doesn't preach and it doesn't zig zag too much for the purposes of intrigue. It allows Affleck to act and become the Towny that deep down somewhere he actually is. it is Method without making him into a stunted version of the troublesome Marlon Brando. If Affleck can keep his mouth shut at the Oscars, he'll deserve that level of billing.

October 01, 2010

I've got a couple excellent video podcasts from iTunesU. My new pet is David Starkey who is an engaging and wry commenter on matters concerning English history.

It should be completely obvious to me that there would be such men as Starkey who provide more background than I might come to expect from only Hitchens, but I have been a bit lazy of late. Obsession with work these days, I'm afraid. And so I will continue at iTunesU and from the archives of the Hoover, and will seek parallel publications from Britain as well.

So what he describes quite brilliantly in his lecture on monarchy is that it is quite still with us, and is a singular part of human nature. Just as I have finished the book on Magellan and was quite initially stunned at the foolish way he met his demise on Mactan Island, I am coming to some conclusions about matters of prestige and dignity affordable to the Peasant. I have been initially intrigued by the idea that prestige and even dignity are things that issue forth from potentates & kings immediately accessible to Peasants, as contrasted to that which is recognizable from good deeds and right thinking. Honor is in whose hands? What is honorable to the Peasant but his fidelity to the king? Well, that question being unresolved, it is clear that Magellan was willing to do all kinds of idiotic and egotistical showing off for his king, and it got him and dozens of men under his command butchered. Ordinary people are extraordinarily motivated by non-democratic institutions, like churches, families, corporations and universities. Starkey makes an easily convincing case for studying monarchism in these modern institutions. I have already been thinking that way in the argot of feudalism, thus my own Peasant Theory.

What he then does is links England's own history of monarchy to an extraordinary moment which bears much repetition in our own American confusion on matters of marriage. He describes the efforts of a phalanx of clergy who sought to block reforms in English law making divorce more acceptable. The leader of that phalanx was one Cosmo Gordon Lang, who if whatever counts for truth be told, was homosexual. I bring this up because of the fashion we currently suffer in endless debate over the meaning of homosexuality to the institution of marriage. It is rather unthinkable, therefore, that we might hear a story of a powerful man who works at the highest levels to assist King George VI in defending Marriage. And the miracle of George VI is that he becomes king precisely because his older brother could not, because his older brother divorced.

It might go without saying in England that divorce among the monarchy is unthinkable, but we Americans probably know nobody but Henry VIII, and that vixen Dianna. But it is so deeply held that Kings and Queens do not divorce to the British people that the monarchy was transformed into a great symbol of prestige and dignity in modern times by the choice of George VI. Rather in the same way we think of Grace Kelly making the extraordinary accessible to the middle classes, Marriage became elevated in England when it became possible for commoners to become part of the Royal Family.

I do not do Starkey justice, and strongly recommend that you watch this video in its entirety.

Half, he says, of Western European countries still have monarchies. Norway, Sweden, Belgium, England, Spain.. Sure the countries are democratic, but the monarchs have their roles and as institutions their permanence says something transcendent that is fundamental to humanity. The nexus between Royalty and marital fidelity is etched in the ideas of honor, prestige and dignity. It's not something just made up by political activists who presumably are 'phobic', but deep in the history of the West.

Listening to a podcast of Simon Schama who is going all over the place in talking about the abolition of slavery, I found this little bit. Jefferson did pass a law banning the importation of slaves. I do recall, when this anti-slavery aspect of Jefferson was raised that I've heard it argued that such things made slavery even worse. Slaves went from being moderately prices commodities, easily replaceable, to increasingly amortized assets, all the more fitting for the later application of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Nevertheless, here's a bit of Jefferson's act.

An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves into any Port or Place Within the Jurisdiction of the United States, From and After the First Day of January, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, it shall not be lawful to import or bring into the United States or the territories thereof from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such negro, mulatto, or person of colour, as a slave, or to be held to service or labour.

SEC 2.And be it further enacted, That no citizen or citizens of the United States, or any other person, shall, from arid after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight, for himself, or themselves, or any other person whatsoever, either as master, factor, or owner, build, fit, equip, load or otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, in any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, nor shall cause any ship or vessel to sail from any port or place within the same, for the purpose of procuring any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, to be transported to any port or place whatsoever, within the jurisdiction of the United States, to be held, sold, or disposed of as slaves, or to be held to service or labour: and if any ship or vessel shall be so fitted out for the purpose aforesaid, or shall be caused to sail so as aforesaid, every such ship or vessel, her tackle, apparel, and furniture, shall be forfeited to the United States, and shall be liable to be seized, prosecuted, and condemned in any of the circuit courts or district courts, for the district where the said ship or vessel may be found or seized.

What is particularly curious about this law is that it is a direct refutation of the Constitutional compromise baked in Article One - Section Nine which states the following:

The Migration and Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

A bit of cheesey legalese saying in 1787 that the slave trade cannot be impinged upon by Congress for 20 years. Well, there's the featherbedding right there. And it is Jefferson who makes sure that Congress moves as soon as it's Constitutional to outlaw the trade.